Dreaming of Demons (Dream x oc)

[11] Security Issues

I took a giant gulp from my water bottle, the rush of the cool liquid soothing my overworked muscles. I had been practicing my combat skills with Sapnap over the past few days, and he won every time we duelled. I was getting better, though. I was beginning to find my rhythm with it.

"We should probably get going." Sapnap stood up and dusted himself off, waiting for me.

I joined him, stepping out of the precious shade. My sore muscles complained and the sun felt hotter than usual as we headed out of the arena. I used my fingers to brush the wild strands of hair out of my face and back into my ponytail. I probably looked a mess after duelling for hours.

"What the..." Sapnap trailed off and I looked up to see him toe a bloodvine curling across the path with his shoe.

"This wasn't here before, right?" He asked.

My brows knitted and I glanced around before walking up to the bloodvine myself. "No, it wasn't. Would they really have walked all the way over here to plant one?" My gaze followed the weaving bloodvine until I found the base of it in the dirt not far from the path.

"Yeah, they would because they're annoying." Sapnap bent down and grabbed the vine with his hands, snapping it in half. He tossed it into the grass.

"It would probably be better to pull it all the way out." I said.

Sapnap grumbled and moved to the thicker base of the bloodvine, and I stepped into the grass to help him as well. It was pretty easy to pull it out, which confirmed our suspicions that it had been planted recently. Most of the red, spindly roots were small.

I sighed. "We need to find some way to stop this Egg thing."

"We've already tried." Sapnap said. "We've tried a lot of things, but the Egg is...it's too strong. That sounds like a dumb thing to say, but it really is."

"So we just...let them run around and spread the Egg? Surely there's something we can do—like, use a lot of TNT?"

He shook his head. "That's already been done, and it didn't go very well." He glanced down the path. "We don't really know what we're dealing with. Once we do, we can find a way to destroy it. Karl's been looking into books but I like to do hands-on experimenting." He grinned at me, then his smile dropped. "But until then, we can't really do anything."

I looked over at the exposed vine we had tossed away as Sapnap started back down the path. There had to be some way the Egg could be destroyed. It didn't make sense that it could just pop into existence and completely plague a whole community of people. Books were probably a good idea to start finding more about the Egg, but if Karl hadn't found anything yet...then maybe Sapnap's way of dealing with it head-on was the best at the moment.

I hadn't been here for as long as anyone else, but the Egg was already a nuisance. It needed to go before it claimed every part of this land with it's crimson vines. I didn't want to think about what the Egg could do if it took control of everyone's minds.

I needed to help find a way to stop this Egg before chaos happened.

---

Later that day, I found myself standing in front of the lava on the way to Dream—but now it was an actual part of my job.

"I realized you could grow a sort of friendship with him." Sam had told me earlier. "That way we could get information out of him if we ever needed it."

My brows creased. "What kind of information would I need to do that for?"

Sam shrugged. "He tends to know things that we don't. But I think you could just continue doing what you were doing before."