(PC's Work Ongoing)
If the entire situation were not so dangerous and Kale wasn’t fighting for his life as hard as Chloe was, she might very well wonder whether the darkling had deliberately led her into a trap. As it is, when Kale gives name to the threat, she cannot help but suspect the rebels of Noctos have decided to sabotage them.
Chloe casts spell after spell on their attackers and for a short while, Kale sparkles and glows with a lovely golden light from one of Chloe’s wards, but eventually even the princess’ powerful protection falters under the incessant blows of the vironicles. As she was not imbedded in the dream, her control over it is equivalent to a child’s control over a slippery trout twice its size. What little probability she can shift in their favor taxes her beyond measure. Her spells are quickly used up and she finds herself resorting to trump trickery and craftiness to battle the creatures and keep herself in one piece.
She is trumps in front of a three headed red faced zombie thundering toward Kale who is busy fending off a troop of six bat winged creatures with giant spider faces. She simply holds her dagger firmly and the monster’s own momentum impales it, although the impact causes her to gasp slightly in pain as her delicate bones bend horribly, but thankfully do not break. Chloe uses a tomoe-nage throw Emrys would have been proud of and launches the corpse at three emaciated men with scarred faces and lips sewn shut with coarse twine. The zombie knocks them over as if Chloe had engaged in some strange sort of zombie apocalypse bowling. The typically lighthearted fae seems both focused and brave despite obviously being outmatched and if the vironicles had not had infinite numbers on their side, it is quite possible she and Kale might have been able to defeat them or at least managed a safe retreat.
She finds herself standing in front of a shop selling martial arts weapons. She picks up a zombie leg lying nearby courtesy of Kale and smashes the display window with it, spattering the broken glass and her clothes with blood.
“Ugh. Shady dreams are so disgusting,” she grumbles with a frown on her pretty face and her eyes darkening to a deep twilight.
She picks up a handful of knives and begins throwing them at the zombies, her aim quite good and several fall to the ground with blades imbedded deep within their eye sockets, through their throat or sticking out of their ears.
When Kale tells her to find a backdoor, she calls out in protest, “But he’s just a boy, Kale!” and the Knightshade realizes that throughout the fray, Chloe has been struggling to get closer to the dreamer. She blanches when an ocean of zombies bearing chainsaws surround the boy and seem to swallow him beneath their writhing putrid bodies.
“Oh no,” she says softly, stumbling when Kale pushes her out of the way of lizard with hands made fanged babies with poisoned claws at the end of their chubby arms.
She rights herself and mumbles an apology. Perhaps to the boy she can no longer see. Perhaps to Kale. Perhaps to her father for not being strong and clever enough to have corrected this Dark Wrong.
She is not so naïve as to remain gloom struck and she quickly begins fighting alongside Kale much like she might have Emrys and replies in an even strong voice, that rings sweet and reassuring amidst the chaos, “I can find it. Just give me a few minutes to concentrate.”
Chloe is well aware of backdoors. She had been confined to Nod’s Tower by her father more than once for Dream Jumping through them. Even though Emrys had dabbled in the rush himself before he’d been appointed to man-at-arms, he despised it when Chloe gambled her life on such uncharted risks. Still, Chloe couldn’t quite help herself and had experimented enough in the dangerous game that she was quite adept at seeking the constructs. Emrys felt her trump abilities almost let her dowse for them she found them so quickly and perhaps he was right, for when she put her mind to it, they often glowed as if lit from behind, slivers of twinkling light almost seeming to call to her.
Chloe does indeed find the door, and far more quickly than any other fae might who wasn’t holding court over the dream itself.
“Here, Kale!” she calls cheerfully as she points at what to Kale looks like nothing more than an innocuous looking manhole. She sounds as bright and happy as if they were simply playing hide and seek.
She stands up and whirls around, using an iron fan she had confiscated from the shop to slice off the head of a fire breathing goblin with a deft throw. She extends her hand to Kale with a weary smile as she says encouragingly, “We’ll be fine once we’re through.”
When Kale grabs her, every muscle in her body tenses, expecting the Knightshade to simply throw her to the horde, for her experiences with the enemy of the Oneiroi had taught her the odds were far in favor of such treatment. A wave of shock goes through her, and it is not fear she feels as much as the sadness of betrayal…and then his lips are upon her and for a moment the clamoring of their adversaries is lost as she melts into a kiss born of unchained passion that seems so at odds with the sophisticated man that had been so carefully escorting her to the Land of Nightmares.
The connection is wildly intense and the essence of his powerful presence seems to roar in her ears and course through her body. Her cheeks flush with a rosy glow despite their desperate circumstances and she finds herself laughing and smiling up at him with as much ease as if they were on a picnic with one another.
And then she is flying through the air, but not toward the zombies. Her heart hammers in her chest as he looses his grip upon her and leaves her tumbling through the backdoor without him.
How could he? How could he abandon her? Was this all an elaborate set up?
She can’t seem to quite wrap her mind around paradoxical behavior of the man and when she sees him lifting the cover to set it over the door she cries out his name in anguish.
Quick as a wink she slashes her wrist with her onyx blade, the Light within her blood burning her own eyes this deep within the Lands of Noctos. She can already sense her blood powerfully calling to, awakening, and beckoning other Shades in the Shadows of nearby dreams. Like rushing streams of silver spun moonlight, her blood spills through the opening and begins painting pools pulsing with the power of the Oneiroi royal family.
Chloe doesn’t know whether Kale betrayed her or not, but the sacrifice of her blood should draw enough aid that an exodus portal could be constructed and allow him to survive. Of course, if he betrayed her, Chloe has no quarrel with the idea of returning and permanently stilling the man’s heart herself.
Unfortunately, her efforts left her no time to control her fall and as she slides past feathery insubstantial dream threads and Limbo rushes up toward her, she finds herself dizzily thinking two things. The first was an idle bit of wonderment as to whether Kale had sacrificed himself for Chloe…or whether he had sacrificed Chloe and proven himself a Shady traitor. The second was that she should have wiped the ichor from her blade, for its poison was rapidly leeching into her being and between the blood loss and the toxin, she felt ill and as if all her substance was being drained away.
And then she hits something hard. Her cheek burns with the chill of cold, unyielding flagstones. A booted toe flips her over roughly and between the swimming black spots she thinks she makes out a woman’s face, her lips set in a cruel smile, but her eyes filled with hurt.
“Another dead one,” she announces.
A disembodied male voice floats across the room like a ghost, “Are you sure? She looks alive to me.”
“She’ll be dead in a few minutes. It’s not worth bothering the King for this sorry broken whelp. They’re all so weak.”
Chloe shuddered. The scent, the feel, the darkness of Knightshades almost suffocating. And yet she knew she was not home. Because she sensed there was no Hypnos. There was no Oneiroi here. She felt it to her very core…although the Scape echoed with their deaths, plaguing her consciousness like phantom pains might an amputee. She rolls over and throws up, feeling blind and empty and ungrounded.
Where was this place? Where am I? Where is everyone? Well, everyone good that is…
The woman made a disgusted snort and stepped on the small of Chloe’s back, pushing the poor fairy’s cheek into her own vomit, the boot in her back sharp and painful. A fever takes her and she can feel herself shaking, although it feels like someone else’s body. As she lies on the floor, she sees strange runes painted on the stone. She cannot see enough of the glyph to understand it, but it is powerful and it seems to bind her somehow to this place.
The man, a blond as well approaches. He binds her hands and blindfolds her.
“What’s your name?” he asks, neutrally enough to not be completely unkind.
“Do Knightshades dream about plagues and fire ants?” she mumbles, having always wondered what Shades dreamt of and assuming she might as well find out before she dies.
The woman grumbles, “For the love of Nyx, they are the bloodiest fools that ever breathed in the Night. I have no idea why Zane thinks we need one,” and she deftly flips Chloe over again on the rough stone with a well-aimed kick, causing the princess’ head to hit the ground hard.
“Is grandmother here? Nyx? Is she here?” Chloe asks in a dazed voice, a ribbon of hope brimming in her voice before her ravaged mind and body claim her consciousness and leave her floating dreamless in the dark.
“Dreams of Hades. I’ll get Zane and you clean her up,” the man curses and he flashes the woman a glare before he hastens to the King’s chambers.