The Story VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 7

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse Seven: The Story

Marion stood frozen, his finger touching the cracked and drying blood on his lip. His mind tried to catch up with itself as it ran in circles inside his head screaming absurd theories and panicking.

"Okay, Option number one is that I bit my lip during the hallucination. And I guess it matches the scene from the dream world so well because my sick tumour ridden brain incorporated me biting my lip into the hallucination, because you know, it's considerate like that. Option number two is that I just dived head first into a less PG-13 version of the tales of Narnia, only without the wardrobe and the Lion Messiah analogue," Marion paused in mid monologue and noticed people were staring at him, he debated trying to hide, but discarded the idea and kept talking. He needed to clear his head more than he needed to look normal to strangers at this point.

"Of course option three would be that both things are true. I have a nasty brain tumour that is psychically teleporting me into a Narnia world where I can be a hero as my brain dies. Given the life I'm living, I could deal with that. The question then would be whether I stay in the Narnia land, with it's cannibal monsters and paranoid villagers after I die or the window is only temporarily open due to my occasionally amusing brain sickness?"

He paused again.

"There are probably other options, but I can't think of them right now. I can ask Harley later, he'll think of all the boring reasonable options. Harley!"

Marion tipped his head down to look at his cell phone, now sitting on the concrete walkway beneath his feet. He bent down and picked it up cautiously. The phone thankfully appeared to merely be scratched and not broken entirely- Marion could not afford to replace it if it broke. Harley's call had dropped. Marion noted that the phone was displaying seven new text messages. Marion opened his text messages, they were all from Harley.

<<Marion are you still there? I can't hear you but there's still sound on the phone.>>

<<Marion are you ok?>>

<<What's happening? Talk to me>>

<<You've got me worried. text back.>>

<<Marion>>

<<MARION!>>

<<Marion can you hear me? Do you need help? Marion when is your break over?>>

Marion's shoulders sagged as he read the last text. He looked at the time listed on the phone, he'd been in dreamland for at least twenty five minutes. His break was fifteen minutes. He was late. Again.

Marion quickly tapped out a text to Harley.

<<I'm ok. Late. Again. Hallucinated again. I'll tell you later. So screwed. I'm never lucky.>>

Marion considered his options. He could sneak back and hope that he hadn’t been missed. Or he could just tell Mr. Wheately that he had just made a pact to save the children of a lady from a magical village inside one of Marion’s hallucinations. Sneak and and hope that nobody had noticed seemed like the better option. If he was lucky, but that seemed like a bad thing to think about just at that moment. Marion darted back into the building and walked as casually as he could to his section while also staying out of clear view of other employees. Marion kept alert for any glimpse of the tall razor shaped profile of Mr. Wheately.

Marion finally reached the literature section, and with Mr. Wheately nowhere nearby and no anywhere in sight, Marion allowed himself a brief thought that maybe his luck wasn’t getting any worse. Marion truly loved bookstores, even big box commercialized cookie cutter bookstores like Allons-Y Books. Bookstores were quiet; almost like a library, although a bookstore was never that quiet. Marion took a moment to breathe in the silence, the quiet spaces in the air that gave Marion room to think. And then into that silence clamoured the sounds of a male and female voice rising in argument.

"This is not the time or the place, and neither is it your place to discuss your female objections to my business activities. Know your role in the grand scheme and keep to it Mary." The man's voice was loud, but he wasn't yelling. Marion knew that voice from University, he had heard it in the throat's of many tenured professors who didn't have a counter argument, but didn't agree with the student's assessment. Whoever Mary was, she was on the receiving end of an authority lecture. Marion also knew that if the fight got out of hand Mr. Wheately would somehow find a way to blame Marion for it. That seemed to be how the game was being played today at any rate. Marion strode through the shelves, honing in on the argument, hoping to placate the fighting couple before Mr. Wheately decided that this argument somehow showed something unemployable about Marion.

"Do you want to know what is my place Darius? My place is, as you so love to tell me, raising our children right. How am I going to raise them right when they watch you destroy lives for a few more dollars? How am I going to tell that it's important to be a moral and ethical person when their father is willing to gouge out an open pit mine in the middle a protected park on indigenous land by using the loophole of setting up a fake tribal council to approve your project? How do I tell them that morality is important when there father does that?"

"It's not a fake council, the local governments: both federal and municipal have recognized that tribal council as valid. And do you think that the world keeps turning without raw material? Do you think our comfortable existence with my lovely car and that amazing house you get to raise our children in are possible without the materials needed to build them? THey come from somewhere Mary, you just don't like to look at the process."

Marion rounded the corner and saw the people who were arguing. The man was imposing and dressed in a white on white suit with a crimson tie. He hair was a rich auburn streaked with grey. Two children, a girl with black hair who looked about nine years old and a boy with auburn hair who looked about thirteen years old stood behind the woman. Marion recognized the woman instantly as the woman from his hallucination.

"Morrigan?" He asked in surprise.

The family turned and they all looked at him in confusion, the man named Darius scowled, and the woman looked at Marion with an expression that told him instantly that she didn't know him. But he still knew her. Her hair was black with the same single strip of white. She was dressed in modern clothing, but all black with bird shaped patterns along the edges. This woman was Morrigan, Marion was sure of it. What he was to do know though, Marion had no idea.

"I'm sorry to interrupt. Can I help you folks find anything?"

"Yes," the woman said, " You can help my husband find your business ethics section. Meanwhile, I am looking for the works of Chinua Achebe. Do you know where his books are located?"

"My grasp of business and of ethics are perfect. Perhaps if you ran a business and had some income of your own, you would understand the realities of business and ethics on the ground." Darius said.

"I stayed home to raise the kids on your insistence you hypocrite. And I gave up a promising career to do so."

As the two began to argue again the girl pull on her mother's dress, "Mom. The Dreamer is here. He's here to help."

Marion looked at the little girl in shock.

"You have come to help, right?"

Darius stopped talking and looked back at Marion. "Of course he is. That's why we came in here. You should help them find the books Maia wants and then we can leave. It was Maia's idea to come here. So once we have her books, we can be on our way. We can continue this discussion in private, where family matters should remain."

Marion's mind raced, but he calmed himself back into bookseller mode, "You're in the right area for Chinua Achebe, it's sorted by last name in the Literature section. But I don't know that we'll have much of his work besides 'Thing's Fall Apart', the store tends to only stock things that have pop culture visibility," He turned to the little girl named Maia, "And what book did you want help finding?"

The little girl looked up and him, "Do you have any copies of 'Twelve Years a Slave'? Or what about Nelson Mandela's autobiography?"

"How old are you?" Marion asked.

"Nine. Why?"

"Those are heavy books. That's a great reading level for your age if your reading those books. Heavy subjects too, they're both about people who were unjustly imprisoned."

"Did you put her up to asking for those books?" Darius said, his voice rising to dangerous levels. He took a step closer to Mary and loomed over her in a way that made Marion suspect he might strike her. Marion quickly squeezed between them arms up.

"Kids are perceptive," Marion said quickly, "The whole store can tell you two are having difficulties, and your daughter is going to hear this at home too. If she's trying to send a message, maybe you should listen."

"How dare you! Do you know who I am? I am Darius Salt, and I could buy and sell you."

A little voice in Marion's head told him that this was not the situation he needed to be in right now. That little voice told him to back off, and to apologize and let the fight continue. Out of the corner of his vision, Marion could see Mr. Wheately leaning back against a bookshelf watching. Marion knew that how this ended would say a lot about his future at the company.

"Please help us." Maia said quietly. Marion wasn't sure if anyone else heard her. But Marion heard her.

"Then, Mr. Salt. Perhaps that says a lot more about why your daughter chose those books than anything her mother could have told her to say. Because, I you treat your business interests anything like you treat your family, your grasp of ethics would make Ebeneezer Scrooge shake his head at the disgrace of it."

Mr. Wheately seemed to materialize beside Marion as he finished speaking, "My name is Wheately, sir. I'm store manager. Can I be of some assistance?"

Darius Salt stood with his mouth open and stared at Marion for a moment. He tried to speak and made no sound. He opened his mouth a second time, but no words emerged. Maia giggled and finally Darius Salt found his voice again.

"Yes you can be of some assistance. Fire this employee."

"It would be my pleasure sir."

Marion smiled and shook his head, "At least I earned it."

An Ass Transformed VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 6

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse Six: An Ass Transformed

The wendigo didn't so much run as it scrambled across the ground- Marion thought that thing was trying to run on all fours, but was being hampered by the proportions of its body which were still nominally human. The creature seemed bled dry, both of colour and of body fat. The Wendigo was so thin it might have passed for an Egyptian Mummy, save that it was very rapidly closing on Marion.

Marion took a moment before a thought occurred to him. Vision or not, tumour or not, he should probably be running right now. The wendigo was now close enough that Marion could count its teeth and smell its acid breath. That was enough of a preview for Marion.

Marion fled from the Wendigo.

The grey clay mud underneath Marion's feet didn't make flight easy and he scrambled along, not to unlike the Wendigo getting covered in grey as the paint like liquid clay sprayed up from his thrashing attempts to flee.

As he ran he heard bits and pieces of conversation.

"Is that a Wendigo?"

"The Knights of Purity will kill it."

"Who is that it's chasing?"

"Must be a savage, might turn into a Wendigo at any time."

"Maybe a spy for Blackhart?"

"Doesn't look like part of Blackhart's tribe."

"We should kill it just to be safe. Blackhart's raiding parties will starve us all."

"Maybe we should try to make peace?"

"Don't say such things, the King will send the Hound for you."

"He should send the Hound for Blackhart."

"The Hound can smell fear. It will cleanse the heathen and the infidel."

"I don't think Blackhart feels fear."

Most of the people's faces remained a blur as Marion ran through the muddy streets. Nobody got in Marion's way. But he did notice a woman dressed in considerably better than the undyed grey wool clothing of the other villagers. she was dressed in black with red bird-like patterns lining the sleeves and hemlines. Her appearance seemed ageless, she might have been thirty years old and might have been eighty. Her hair was raven black with a streak of grey running through it. Her eyes bore the hard expression of somebody who was used to being under attack and she used those eyes to stare Marion almost to a stop. She looked at Marion, and nodded with an expression that one might use for a business acquaintance or a distant relative.

The snarls of the Wendigo reminded Marion that he should be running. Beside the woman, three Soldiers turned and noticed the wendigo and the fleeing stranger. They were dressed in white tabbards with white leather plates visible underneath. On the tabbard in black was a sword engulfed in flame. One of the soldiers looked distinctly older, one was built like a large fat toad and looked unsettlingly familiar and the third was tall and thin as a paper cut and looked just like Percy Wheately.

"Lady Morrigan, we must destroy the monster." The eldest of the three soldiers said.

The woman nodded and the soldiers joined the pursuit without another word. Marion didn't look back to see how far behind the wendigo the soldiers were and simply ran on.

"Rule number one about horror movies: When running from the monster, don't look back and trip." Marion gasped to himself as he ran. But the grey mud under his feet was hard to get any traction on, and Marion found himself sliding and stumbling for more than he would like to be given the circumstances. He rounded a corner and found himself staring a stone well directly in his path. He tried to swerve and found he feet slipping free from the sloppy surface beneath him. His legs kicked skyward and his swung his arms wildly in a desperate attempt to first regain his balance and then, belatedly, to break his fall. His chin hit the ground first and he bit his tongue. His vision and his hearing faltered, and Marion found himself in a brief sea of white light and distant ringing bells, and then he was aware that he was lying in the liquid grey clay. As his hearing returned, Marion noticed the sounds of battle: the metal clang of swords, the the yells and grunts of physical exertion, the snarl of a cornered beast.

Marion pulled himself to his hands and knees, aware of the taste of blood in his mouth and feeling that blood trickling down his chin. Marion looked behind him to see the soldiers locked in combat with the wendigo, which they had back against the earthen wall of a nearby hut. The wendigo was unarmed, but even with just claws and fangs the monster was keeping both soldiers firmly on the defensive.

Marion tried to gather himself, and as he wobbled to his feet he noticed that a crowd had gathered. And again Marion became aware of bits of conversation from the crowd.

"Look at the savage. Look at the blood on his mouth. Who did he bite? He'll turn for sure."

"No, he has to actually eat them, otherwise every overactive lover would turn."

"It's not about eating, it's about the symbolic act of cannibalism. A person has to devour something of value, a betrayal of their people."

"That's rubbish, you watch. he'll turn any minute now."

A man screamed in pain, and Marion turn his attention back to the fight. The Wendigo had ripped out the throat of the fat soldier and taken his sword. The wendigo was not a skilled swordsman, but the extra ferocity of his attacks drove to two remaining soldiers back. The tide of the battled had clearly turned against the remaining two soldiers.

Marion shook his head. The soldier weren't winning. Marion wasn't sure they that they were going to survive. Marion glanced around and saw the crowd had dispersed. Now the villages cowered behind doors and peered over window frames. They weren't going to be helping any time soon, and Marion didn't see other soldiers nearby.

"At least in the first dream like this one I had my Tomahawks. What were they called: Victor and Edgar? Weird names, okay- but that fits my brain. Either way it would be nice have them so I could help."

As he was speaking, Marion noticed that his hands had closed around two cylindrical objects. He looked down and discovered that he did in fact have the tomahawks in his hands.

"More proof that this is a hallucination. But maybe I can win the hallucination." Marion said to him.

He sized up the Wendigo, now spattered with the soldiers' blood. It didn't look friendly. But at least compared to his last hallucinated battle, the odds were good here. Marion clenched his teeth and joined the fight. He didn't know how to fight, but he made the most of his position. The wendigo had pushed the soldiers back and Marion was now behind the creature. He charged silently and swung both tomahawks down onto the Wendigo's shoulders, cleaving into the creature and causing both its arms to fall limply to its sides. The Wendigo spun around to face Marion, arms pinwheeling like sock puppets, and the Wendigo lunged teeth first and Marion, causing him to stumble back and fall hard to the ground. The impact of the fall drove the air from his lungs, and Marion looked up in terror at the advancing Wendigo as Marion struggled to force air back into his lungs.

The Wendigo now had it's back to the soldiers and they took advantage by thrusting swords through the back of the wendigo, metal triangles protruding from the creatures chest pinning it to the sky above Marion as it thrashed and frothed and slowly died.

Marion scrambled out from under the quivering wendigo, and the eldest soldier placed a booted foot on the creature's back and pushed it loose from the two swords to land in the liquid clay.

Marion started to thank the soldiers, but stopped short noting that they were staring at him with expressions that didn't scream gratitude. Marion suddenly noticed people whispering about his tomahawks.

"I saw him summon those weapons."

"A wizard."

"Those are the weapons of the savage."

"A witch."

"A wizard."

"He'd have slit our throat while we slept."

"Worse than a Wendigo. We're probably lucky the Wendigo flushed him out." The Mr. Wheately Guard muttered

Marion shook his head as the soldiers began to advance upon him with their swords pointed forward.

"I've got to get a rabbit's foot or something. This luck is going to kill me."

Marion spun his heel in the mud and grabbed the well for support and then bolted. Soldiers gave chase. Marion could hear them behind him. They were armoured, and Marion noticed that they hadn't caught him and the Wendigo until he had fallen. Maybe he could outrun them. Although where he would run, Marion was entirely unsure. He didn't know the layout of the town, and he expected that the soldiers did.

Marion couldn't see any street signs and the repeating collection of mud house, log house, sod house quickly blurred in Marion's mind and he found himself running wildly down slippery mud streaked gaps between buildings that all looked alike.

"I'm lost in a hostile dream town in the middle a hallucination, any minute now I'm going to find myself in my underwear." Marion gasped between ragged breaths.

Marion had been right about being faster than the soldiers, but he was starting to wear out. And to make matters worse, the Soldiers clearly knew the town well and had ambushed him several time by popping out in front of them. Marion had scrambled down a different alley each time, but he had the distinct sense that he was being funnelled and there was little he could do about it.

Marion's fears were confirmed when he scrambled out of an alley and found himself staring a vertical log walls on three sides, trapped against the wall outside the bailey of the castle.

"I see you're in danger Dreamer. Perhaps I can help." Marion turned to see the woman from earlier leaning over the wall to look down at him.

Marion shook his head, "Who are you? How do you know me? I mean besides this being my hallucination brought on by a brain tumour? Should I be doing this, having a discussion with my hallucination about the brain tumour causing that hallucination?"

"I am Morrigan. This is not a hallucination, this is a vision of the Shadowlands. This is story. That is how I know you, you are one of the Storytellers, and I need your help."

Marion heard the sounds of armoured bodies moving towards the corner where he stood, "What kind of help?"

"Aid my children. They need the help of the Storytellers. Dreamer and Walker are the ones that the story says will guide them to their destiny, and without the help of the storytellers, they will never be free. This is the price of my help. Decide quickly."

"I don't have much other option, unless I want to find out what it's like to die in a hallucination. I don't much like that option. In those dreams where you're falling, you always want to wake up before you hit bottom. So alright. If I ever meet your children, I will help them."

"You swear on your role in the story?" She asked.

"I hear him." One of the soldiers whispered," He's talking to somebody."

"Yes, fine. I swear."

She clasped her hands and drew a symbol in the air and then leaned down to tap Marion's forehead. Marion's vision went black for a moment and then he blinked and found himself standing where he had begun. He looked down, he clothes were unmarked by the mud.

"Yup," He said quietly, "Hallucination."

He grinned, and felt a slightly crackling on his lip and chin. He reached up and wiped cracked and drying blood from his lips.

"okay, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that." He whispered.

Dreamwalker Rises VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 1 (Draft 2)

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse One: Dreamwalker Rises

"We are that with which stories are made. And our little lives are added to the story when at last we sleep forever. And so we become part of the dreams that others dream when stories are told around a council fire."

The darkness wreathed the council fire as the flames spit sparks and pitch into the night sky. Dreamer stood, looming before the fire to best cast a shadow across the younger members of the tribe as they watched the storyteller in wide eyed wonder. Walker stepped from behind Dreamer and continued speaking where Dreamer had left off.

"These are the stories of the tribe. These are your stories. They belong to you, but more important- you belong to them. You will pass them to the unborn elders of tomorrow. You will keep the Demons and Heroes of the tribe alive by keeping those stories alive, for there is nowhere else where Demons and Gods may live but within the stories that we tell each other."

The children murmured to each other. Virtually every child had heard this before, but every child began to understand the weight of the words in their own time. Some children required many tellings of the story before the lesson took hold. Amidst the sound of murmured voices, Dreamer rose like an ambushing warrior behind the children- now outside the circle- and several of the younger children shrieked.

"And so we will tell you the stories of the First Mother and her companion: First Hero. We will tell you of the Witch Doctor and the Locust King. We will tell of deals First Mother made with the Elder known as Weaver and the pact made between First Hero and the Great Serpent Elder. We will tell you how the Witch Doctor found the ancient laws of the Great Phoenix, that mystery of Void and Fire. And will tell you of the Wendigo and the Hunger that drives them, the fearsome Men of Black and White- that Evil Wyrm known as Falsenight. And we will tell you of what lies behind their hunger and the fear that drives them."

From inside the overlapping Capes that Walker wore, the storyteller produced a grapefruit sized wooden egg carved with designs depicting two figures walking a winding road. The Storyteller grasped the wooden egg at both ends and twisted, and the egg split at the middle with a hollow popping sound. Inside lay another egg, this one carved with depictions of the tribe's history. Dreamer reached in and delicately plucked the smaller egg and then wrenched it open, launching a still smaller egg within high into the air. Walker reach up and snatched the egg on its descent, revealing it in the fire light to be marked with Wendigo faces, and popped it open and tipped the egg within to fall towards the dirt. Dreamer knelt and caught the falling egg with cupped hands and showed the children the vast city walls carved into the egg's surface. Dreamer then gently opened it to reveal an egg again. Dreamer picked the egg from its resting place and handed it to Walker. This egg was smaller than a quail's egg and, as Walker displayed it to the children, the children could see a great tower depicted upon the egg. Walker grasped the egg with both hands, leaving it momentarily invisible. Walker's hands unclasped and in the space where the egg had been lay a black cloth. Dreamer reached up and snatched the black cloth without standing and unfolded it with a flourish and an unexpected flash of light exploded into the air above the storyteller.

Walker stood behind the council fire, cape spread and arms wide.

"And now, the story begins again."

But before either storyteller could speak again, the night was banished by a blast of shimmering snow that roared like a winter lion across the landscape and scoured the darkness away leaving everyone blinking in the sudden washed out light and shivering from the bitter cold. Snarling withered figures with wild hair and hollow eyes appears from out of the whirling clouds of snow. The creatures almost looked like people, and in fact they had been people once. They snapped jaws full of broken bottle teeth and advanced upon the council fire.

"The Wendigo are here." Walker said, flinging the capes aside and drawing his Flanged Mace: Boneshaker.

"Worse will be coming. Children, get behind us." Dreamer added and drew the twin tomahawks: Victor and Edgar.

The corrupted Knights of the Locust King marched out of the freezing mists, the Knights of Unity and the Knights of Purity. Behind them, the monstrous Harvester and the legions of Truthtellers and Confessors stood ready and waiting.

Behind Dreamer and Walker stood the children and the tribe. Between the Locust King's forces and the Tribe stood only these two Storytellers dressed in their crimson armor against a tide of white shrouded soldiers ready to do them harm. Slowly the ranks of Locust King begin marching forward, pikes and Gusarmes out and leveled at the two in blood red raiments. Troops with muskets and flintlocks march besides ones with Kalashnikov variations. The troops washed over and around the two warriors like an avalanche. The Tribe lands disappeared around the two, buried in snow and freezing mists. Tips of corn stalks poked out from the snow as they withered from the cold.

Dreamer and Walker stood back to back in the midst of the enemy, their weapons in constant motion. The army seemed disinterested in them, marching past to devastate the landscape and drown it in winter. Then, as though a signal had been given, the army parted like the red sea and a figure dressed in crimson war robes fringed with gold strode out from the army brandishing an enormous scythe: the Locust King.

Walker stood ready, a bulwark of defense with no gaps through which the enemy could enter. Dreamer shifted constantly, a puzzle no enemy could decipher. Dozens of Knight and Wendigo bodies lay in a gruesome circle around the two. The Locust King strode over the bodies and swung the great scythe one handed in an arc the cut the air in two as it went. The blade bit through Boneshaker without slowing and slit Walker's red armor cleanly, dropping the storyteller to the ground. Dreamer turned to face the Locust King, but the scythe kept swinging, completing a full circle and continuing around, slicing through Dreamer as though the storyteller were maybe of morning fog.

The Locust King stared down at the ruined forms of the storytellers, "What makes you all oppose me? I bring liberation. Through me you all are freed to tell your own stories. Why are you fools willing to die rather than embrace my offer?"

The army in white stormed across the landscape until the land lay like a blank canvas out to the horizon. The Locust Skin stood, leaning on his scythe, staring down at the bodies of Dreamer and Walker, three figures in red against a background painted white.

The wind whipped the Locust King's gilded robes like a scourge and tossed his twin feathered crests wildly.

"Why do you resist?"

And the wind replied, "A good story is like soil, it must be built up and nurtured. You nurture nothing. You get one harvest, and then the winter rains wash away the top soil and nothing grows for years after."

The Locust King turned, swinging his scythe wildly trying to find the source of the voice, "Where are you?"

"Here. We are of the story." The voice said, echoing as though it were two voices speaking as one.

"Who are you? I have defeated everything and everyone."

"Have you defeated the fear that drives you? What do you fear so much that you felt driven to burn and salt everything you love? What fear could drive you to this destruction?"

"I fear nothing! There is no fear!"

Before him, the broken pieces of the storyteller reassembled themselves into a single form, neither Dreamer nor Walker, but both.

"What are you?" The Locust King hissed.

"We are Dreamwalker. And we will test your claim. We are Dreamwalker and the Shadowlands of your mind and your dreams are open to us. We shall see if there is no fear within your story."

And Dreamwalker stepped forward and passed into the Locust King. And the Locust King shuddered as it happened.

The Shadowlands of the Locust King stretched far away, the horizon pulling up rather than down. Color was missing in these Shadowlands, everything was black or white and the contrast was jagged and painful when viewed too long. Dreamwalker stood in front of a great tower of crystal and steel, a door opened at the base of the tower. And Dreamwalker entered.

Inside the tower the floor was built of black and white squares in a chessboard pattern and a great staircase with no protective railing curled up to the top of the tower. Positioned like chessmen around the room, the Men of Black and White stood frozen in their black suits and black sunglasses, sharp against white shirts and white pocket squares. As one, the Men of Black and White turned to look at Dreamwalker. As one, the Men of Black and White raised their left hands to touch their left ears. As one, the Men of Black and White spoke.

"Target has arrived. Commencing operation. Target will be sanctioned."

Dreamwalker drew twin tomahawks and flanged mace and charged the Men of Black and White. The Men of Black and White moved between the blinking of Dreamwalker's eyes. They did not seem to move, but when Dreamwalker swung a weapon towards one of the men of black and white, that man was simply not in the same spot when the weapon arrived. Dreamwalker could not see them move, but that did not stop the storyteller from feeling the results of their movement. Fists like concrete cinder blocks struck from impossible angles, and gunshots rang out after Dreamwalker felt the exploding pain of bullets striking flesh.

"We can't beat them. They are too many, too fast."

"Target is injured."

"This is the Shadowlands, we live or die as the story demands."

"Target is vulnerable."

"This is not the Shadowlands. This is his Shadowlands. How do you think his stories end?"

"Proceeding with sanctions."

"It ends in the throne room. It has to. We can make it."

Dreamwalker moved, leaping straight up to grasp the spiral staircase. Dreamwalker pulled up onto the stairs and charged up the staircase with the Men of Black and White in hot pursuit. Dreamwalker took the stairs five at a time, almost flying up the stairs. Below on the stairs, the marching cadence of the Men of Black and White echoed like a drumbeat of a military band. Another sound added to the chorus, the rich syrupy sound of something very large sliding across a wet surface, black oily liquid dripped from the edges of the stairs as Dreamwalker ran. Coiling down from above was a great monster serpent with a head like a crocodile and a body wide enough to swallow Volkswagen.

"Hello little morsel." The Serpent said, "I am Falsenight, and it is time for you to learn your place. You are not the hero of this tale."

The Enormous black monster rolled and swirled around the staircase, a liquid cable the width of a sedan, a oily black tsunami in the form of a serpentine leviathan.

"You must remember your role, teller of tales. The chosen one must face our hunger and choose. You may only guide the chosen one, but the choice is not yours to make. The hunger is not yours to face."

"How can we guide the chosen one if we do not know what drives your hunger? How can we teach the chosen one if we do not know the choice that must be made."

Falsenight chuckled, a sound not unlike shaking a bag of razor blades dipped in bear grease.

"That is your challenge. Don't you like a challenge?"

"The Dreamwalker is the storyteller and the mentor. Knowledge is their portfolio." A cold monotone voice whispered, a sound so quiet the breeze tore it apart. "The unknown terrifies them, they cannot quantify it or explain it or weave it into song."

"Who's there?" Dreamwalker called.

Falsenight chuckled, "You have awakened The Grey. He smells your fear. You who sought the fear that drives our little Locust now must face your own."

"Show yourself!"

"If you wish."

Before Dreamwalker a shape gradually faded into view. Human-like, but absurdly thin with long insect-like fingers and a grotesquely large head, smooth like a carapace with mandibles rather than a mouth and compound eyes. The being hung in the air, silent and monochrome, as though superimposed on the the space and not fully occupying it.

"We know your fear. We can take it away: take control, walk our path, and the uncertainty will vanish. We promise certainty, stability, safety. Walk our path. Tell our story."

Dreamwalker took a step back. Falsenight chuckled a third time as the Men of Black and White marched through the serpents great coils and blocked the path down the stairs.

"There is no way out. We offer an answer."

"No, you offer lies." Dreamwalker stepped back again, but this time there was no stairway beneath, and the storyteller tumbled backwards into the unknown.

* * * *

Marion Day awoke gasping for air, and sat upright in bed. He looked around at the disgraceful mess that was the bedroom of his bachelor suite. The bed was a simply mattress laying on plastic on the floor of the room. Movie posters were mounted on the wall with rubber cement, 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', 'The Last Man on Earth', 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and 'The Day of the Triffids. Books were left in piles around the room, clothing left piled on books. A laptop lay in the otherwise unused closet. An alarm clock sat on its side next to the bed.

Marion looked around the room again, "It was a dream. Damn. What time is it?"

He looked at the alarm clock, tilting his head.

"Why's it on its side? It's five past five! I start work at six. Did I not wake up when I shut the alarm off? Damn, I'll be late for work!"