Jack, not Jackson

Chapter 52: Pressure.

Pitch's POV:

The enigma has more sides then I accounted for. More complexity.
When I sent my Nightmares to the quaint little castle to harvest terror from dreams, I never expected one to be killed.

My sand phantoms were never truly alive but still. One hadn't been destroyed in so long I'd nearly forgotten that they could be destroyed.

Fact did not need me to believe for it to be true. It was clear they had a way to combat my Mares, but only one had been killed out of the forty or so I had sent.

That begged the question.
If they could kill one, why didn't they kill more?

The simplest answer was that only a small number could combat my minions. As it were, logic preceded I must move up with my plan before the small number taught the others how to fight them.

I had been secretive in my harvest so far. Not allowing the Mares to be seen, slowly increasing terror and distrust as to buckle the hope of the students.

I was curious to see just how much pressure it would take for the school to snap. If a few nightmares could do damage, what could I, the source, destroy?

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Jack's POV:

I had felt this before.
This tension building like spider webs being looped around the necks of all involved. It becomes a deafening silence that no one wants to break.

Like a collective held breath waiting for the piercing scream. Waiting for agony.
its the sound of humans who know they are prey. And there's a predator near.

The silence would settle like dust on a hallway as students passed, unsure who was listening. The only sounds were the soft murmurs as students conversed quietly in two and threes. No laughter, or life.

Students like mine —especially the older ones— knew what it meant to have a threat hanging over them. I would do anything to fill the halls with sound again and after I killed the sand horse, that tension did break.

For now, we had room to breathe.
But I knew it would be back.

The spiderwebs dance as the pressure builds.
The question always at the back of my brain? Nagging every second was.
Would we be ready for it when it snapped?

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Students POV:

Jack killed one.
It can be killed.
It can be killed.

Of the shape of the mare was unfamiliar to anyone that had seen the battle, the material it was made from was not. Each student had seen it before. Just never while awake.

No one ever remembered enough to recall the black sand from dreams. The dream world is a fickle place where reality may become twisted until what passes for reality could not be further from it.

It was partially the dream logic that caused this forgetfulness. Mostly though, it was the terror.

Each of these students had blocked some form of trauma. Locked it away until they had hidden it even from themselves.
Some were better then others at this. Some just had more practice.

This, was the main reason that Jack was flooded with students wanting to confess their Nightmare's shapes after the horse was dead.

It had only been two days since Jack's sword sang and yet he had triple the amount of information to sort through then he'd had just days before.

This meant change.

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Student Narrator POV:

Don't go to sleep.

Something waits there and you don't want to meet it. It's form is different for each of us but each dream follows the same rules.
One: spells only make it angry.
Two: it hinges on something happening that you're afraid of.
Three: it's made of darkness, but you don't notice until later.
Four: you cannot escape.

It will find you in dark halls if you walk alone. Where the shadows are too heavy for the light to push away. It doesn't matter if you sleep or wake in the end.

It'll find you. And when the pressure builds around you, how do you know you won't be crushed?