The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 25: Siege

Emery looked at Wes, who looked at Marcia, who, after a heavy silence, looked at Emery.

She might still have said no, but there weren't any other options.

"How can you get us inside?" she asked.

~

Moxie set up her ballista aimed toward the castle. At least a quarter mile's worth of nightmares writhed in the stretch between, the ones on the outermost edges meandering as if they couldn't figure out where they were supposed to be. Wes, Marcia, Emery, and Ridley formed a tight square, just to the side of the ballista, with Temper at their head. He leaned on his scythe while he loosened the cuffs of his long white coat.

"The minute I fire, they'll be on us," Moxie said. "Stay as tight together as you can. Only use your weapons if Daniel gets pinned. When he tells you to drop, you drop, because I'm going to fire again. Got it?"

It wasn't a complex plan, and they'd gone over it five times already. Moxie would clear the way. Temper would act as a shield. Together, they'd be a living battering ram to get inside the castle. Once inside, Moxie and Temper would have to do crowd control to keep the nightmares outside, leaving the rest of them alone on the inside.

Moxie climbed up the ballista to stand atop it and gain a view over the nightmares. "No time like the present," she said. "Are we all ready?"

Ridley was the only one who didn't confirm. She was looking toward the castle, constantly adjusting her grip on her pick hammers.

"Rid," Wes said softly, "You can stay here with Moxie and Temper. Your doppelgänger won't be strong—we can handle her. You should stay here."

"Because I'm a coward?" Her voice was brittle ice. "You're going. I can go, too. I'm a dreamhunter, too."

Wes recoiled. "I'm not saying you're not capable, just—"

"That I'm a coward."

"No, I don't want you to get hurt!"

Emery gently punched Wes's shoulder. "She can handle herself. We're all in the same boat—we can all help each other out."

Ridley gave her a grateful look. Wes still seemed unhappy about it, but Emery imagined Wes would be unhappy about any situation that involved Ridley going into that castle.

"We're ready," Marcia said.

Moxie nodded. Her ballista shifted, aiming dead-on for the closed iron portcullis that closed off the castle courtyard from the outside. The winch turned on its own, pulling back the heavy drawstring. A bolt of golden light as long as Emery was tall snapped into being, its head a razor point.

Moxie paused then—Temper looked up at her, uncertain—and then she sighed. "I don't like dreamkilling," she said, "but I have to hope it's worth the damage it causes, this time."

The golden bolt turned pure white, so bright it hurt Emery's eyes to look at it. The ballista itself began to glow, too, casting its radiance so far it drew the attention of the closest nightmares.

They didn't have time to react.

The bolt fired from Moxie's ballista with an eagle scream. It skewered the nightmares in its path and tossed aside those only close to it, then sheared through the iron portcullis with a thunderous BOOM that had the entire front wall of the courtyard collapsing in a cloud of rubble. The nightmares skewered or tossed turned dark and began to shrink to nothing, and were shortly followed by their duplicates in the writhing lake, dreams dying for the last time, removed permanently from their dreamer's mind.

A bloodcurdling scream came from the high castle tower. The nightmares still standing turned and set glowing eyes on the dreamhunters.

"Now!" Temper called.

As one, they shot forward. It was a flat-out sprint down the path Moxie had cleared, and as soon as they reached the first nightmares, Temper disappeared. Baying dogs with overlong fangs and villagers bearing torches and pitchforks set upon them and were mown down by a dark wind that rushed from all sides. Every few seconds, Emery caught a gleaming scythe edge or a dash of white coat out of the corner of her eye. She fought to keep her guns down every time a nightmare lunged for her; it was always sliced in two the moment before she was ready to fire.

Nightmares pressed together ahead of them, blocking the way. More spilled in behind.

"Down!" Temper bellowed, appearing in the midst of them and grabbing Ridley to yank her to the ground. Emery, Wes, and Marcia dropped down in time for another bolt, this one gold as wheat, to scream over their heads, ripping through the horde. Then Temper threw Ridley to her feet again and yelled, "Go!"

Their formation was no longer as tight. Marcia pulled ahead and Ridley lagged behind, and Emery could see Temper now between movements, trying to cover the distance between them. She grabbed Ridley's hand and yanked her forward.

Screeching announced the arrival of the bats. "Don't look!" Emery ordered when Ridley tilted her head back, and Ridley obeyed. Looking up would only slow them, and all they could do was hope Temper had it covered.

He did. As the shadow of the bats descended on them, a huge dreamform scythe blade appeared in the air above them and began spinning like a lawnmower blade. The bats, dive-bombing, flew headlong into it. Dream essence exploded into the sky. The colony speared off in different directions, scattering in confusion and disappearing into the dust cloud from the collapsed courtyard wall. Emery, Wes, Marcia, and Ridley leaped through loose stone and warped iron to the weedy courtyard where the castle doors stood splintered and unhinged, blown open in the middle where Moxie's second bolt had pierced them.

When they were past the wall and the host of nightmares was behind them, Temper stopped moving. He stood between them and the nightmares, his neat hair disheveled, his face red and dappled with sweat and his coat and armor ragged. He held his right arm out from his body. The sleeve of his white coat had been sliced clean open across the bicep, along with the armor underneath and the skin beneath that. The liquid oozing from the wound was not blood, but something yellow and black and thick as custard.

He gave it a cursory look, then held his arm up a little higher. A dreamform guillotine appeared around his arm, just above his bicep. "Get in," he called to them, swinging his scythe forward with his left hand and planting the blade in the ground. Five dreamform scythes appeared in the air around him. "Moxie and I will make sure they don't get follow."

Wes grabbed Ridley and turned her away right before the guillotine blade snapped down. Temper cried out; his arm thumped to the ground, fingers curling one last time; and the guillotine remolded itself to a new arm, claylike and disproportionate but functional, where the old one had been. Stemming the flow of blood and allowing him to wield his scythe.

"Go!" he yelled at them again, "before I kill you myself!"

The four of them dove through the broken castle doors.

(Next time: The author offers sincerest apologies for the piece of header art on the next chapter.)