Daydreams And Nightshade (DaN #1)

Chapter 11: Gooseberries and obese sheep

Luna had no idea how long she'd stared through the tavern window at the thing in the sky. She tried processing what it all meant. Noah's visions most likely not being his imagination for one, not to mention learning of this being's existence in general.

She glanced down at her bare wrists and bandaged hands with a frown, trying to block out Lucius and Damien still fighting in the background.

"It doesn't matter if that thing is up there or not, it was always there!" Damien argued and Lucius rolled his eyes as he packed the last of their things together.

"There's a blight in the sky, Damien. We came here to try and fix things but really, we can't do much about a thing like that and we've already been in enough danger as it is."

"Exactly. So we march over to the town hall, grab Frey and leave."

"We can't stay here," Lucius said through clenched teeth, having grown tired of arguing about it.

"I, well... Don't you think we should try to help everyone, Father?" Noah tried to join the argument, still teary eyed from what he'd just experienced at the farms. It was the only proper reaction around there Luna thought. Despite usually finding Noah's sensitivity annoying it was sort of welcome compared to her father and grandfather's rather mild reactions considering what they were facing.

"All anyone can do is evacuate and hope it doesn't spread," Lucius said, folding shirts at an alarming pace. "What do you suppose we do about that?"

"I— I don't know... Could we make it easier somehow?"

"We're only five, or maybe four people." Lucius shot Damien a glare. "Whatever we could do to help wouldn't amount to much, so I'm prioritizing your safety."

Luna defiantly ignored the relief she felt when hearing they'd leave and instead forced her mind and eyes back to the thing in the sky, summoning all her curiosity and determination instead while thinking back to recent events.

It proved difficult.

They'd managed to beat the dangers in the house rather easily, and the dream had ended as soon as the woman in it woke up. It was good news, proving the blight was not invincible inside dreams, but humans could still be injured inside it as well and Luna was not fond of the idea of risking that again. Yet the woman they'd rescued was, after some struggle from a roughed up Vincent and Lucius, resting upstairs in the tavern, and what stopped that horrid blight from invading her dreams a second time?

"I want to stay," Luna still said, almost without thinking, tearing her eyes away from the mara. Lucius opened his mouth to obviously object to it but she continued before he got a chance. "I want to solve this. That thing up there has to have a—A weakness or something and if this continues maybe it'll spread further so... We need to stop it."

"Luna, it's a blight. You can't—"

"I killed a vampire earlier."

"A dream-conjured vampire, and they're not even nearly the same thing."

"You said it was impress—"

"Luna, listen. Blights are not to be meddled with. Especially not—" Lucius interrupted himself briefly and took a deep breath. "You're... You're still children, and I won't have you hurt."

Luna's glare at him was relentless though, and if recent incidents had proven anything, it was that her stubbornness was impossible to stop.

So Lucius let out a sigh of defeat.

"How about this then? I get you home safely, and I'll gather a group of people to come over here and try to deal with the situation."

"You know blight banishers?" Damien asked from the background.