Waverly's hands stiffened when she turned over in bed, still in a dead sleep. The weather had been warm when she first fell asleep but it went incredibly cold a few minutes later. She subconsciously thought it was because of the wedding sport she had taken part in the previous day.
In honor of Aurora and Brijjet's union, a peculiar set of games was held. Phyllis had convinced her to play the bridge crossing - a dangerous game where one had to attempt to get to the other end of a lake by walking across a long thin bridge whilst holding up a bowl of water in their hands. To make the game even more challenging the nixies were asked to occasionally jump out of the water, throwing fish or berries at the participant. Whoever could make it to the end of the lake with the water still intact in their bowls was declared the winner but - nobody won at all.
It was quite an impossible game and Waverly had ended up falling into the lake over twenty times along with many other Elves who tried their luck. Ceylon had fallen in fifteen times and refused to participate again when water lodged in both his ears. Phyllis made only two attempts and opted to join the audience but the persistent trier amongst them was Grace. She stumbled into the lake more times than any other person did what with her incredible weight and the fact that she always attempted to swat the nixies each time they reached for her legs.
Soon enough, everyone had ignored the lure of being named champion and played solely for the fun and laughs.
Waverly noticed that she had experienced little shakes right before bed and when the weather became stiffly cold she curled up into a ball, snuggly and warm with her newest blanket. Queen Daya had ordered for some new beddings to be given out to Tyros in honor of her daughter's marriage and Waverly thought it was the best timing - but the cold was far from normal.
The night was eerily silent, void of the usual lullabies from nocturnal creatures. The lantern in Waverly's room flickered and swayed despite the absence of wind, the door creaked quietly as if someone on the outside leaned against it in an attempt to open it without causing a stir.
The bed covers on which Waverly lay began to inflate with an unusual air. She twisted and turned, faintly aware that something sneaky yet very sinister had made its way into her room but she slept on. Then she felt a freezing sensation seize her bare legs. She gasped and jerked awake, kicking her blankets back as she shuffled away from the bed. The once blue bedsheet had turned the color of crude oil and it undulated like gentle waves on an ocean surface.
She stepped back in horror, staring wide- eyed at the bedding. It looked like it was alive and whatever was in it was now stuck inside. Calaire suddenly began to glow sharply on Waverly's wrist. She released it and it materialized into a sword. Following her instincts, she lurched forward and stabbed a hole into the bedsheet.
The scream that erupted from the linen made her drop her sword and clamp her hands over her ears. It simultaneously sent a crippling wave of energy through the room that knocked her back and sent her crashing into her bathroom door. The fall made her back creak uncomfortably indicating that she had just dislocated a bone somewhere around her spine.
Whilst she recovered slowly; groaning and arching her back in pain, she caught sight of something melting through the wall near the window and felt an overwhelming wave of panic. Then the feeling died off when she realized it was only Cassiope.
The nature spirit caught sight of Waverly's ripped sheets and grabbed her face in total shock.
"Oh no!" She exclaimed with a gasp. "Friend Waverly? She has gone too."
"No, i am over here." Waverly called weakly.
Cassiope gasped in relief and ran over to help her friend stand up.
"How did you break it?" She asked, baffled by the sight of broken bathroom door.
"With my back, i think." Waverly replied with a stiff groan, stretching with effort and still quite dazed by her fall. "I think something ungodly was here in my room with me."
Cassiope's expression returned to one of panic; the way it had been when she first came into the room. "Yes. That is why i came, to see if you are alright. It is everywhere, it is."
Waverly felt cold again. "What is everywhere?"
Cassiope looked like she would break into tears the next second. "I am not sure but it is very evil. It is getting to everyone in bed."
"Guh?" Was the only word Waverly could utter. Her face had gone slack from a slow realization.
"I am alright, i am. I am because flower spirits do not sleep but i heard them, i did. People, everybody - screaming! It is killing people in their sleep."
Waverly felt a violent tremble course down her hands and a chill encased her spine. She suddenly remembered the Eyer Virga and the vision they had shown to her in The Repelling Earth. When she finally recovered from her frozen state of shock, she grabbed Cassiope by the hand.
"Take me there." She said.
"Where?" Cassiope asked fearfully.
"The tower with the big bronze bell inside of it in Nael. Take me right now to the very top of it." Waverly instructed.
Cassiope looked puzzled but she nodded obediently and took Waverly's hand. The world melted into colors and back again into a star filled night sky, candle lit houses and a big, reddish brown brown bell. Waverly looked around at the partially dark but wide bell cot. The full moon shone white and bright, reflecting against the floors and the lower half of the bell.
She held Cassiope and guided her into the open where a broad wall separated one side of the town from the Almshouse. The wall had a cut in it, like a groove but wider and finer and it stretched on as far as the eyes could see, forming numerous barriers within the town. Horses were sometimes ridden through this groove as they served as shortcuts to certain places. Waverly loved hearing the clip-clop of hooves and the rolling of carriage wheels against the cobbled floor whenever she walked underneath the wall.
"Can you uh," She began looking about frantically. Nael alone was colossal and even though she had a plan it would take hours to execute and many people would have lost their lives by then. "Can you identify the houses with the things inside them?"
Cassiope shook her head. Her hands were clasped together under her chin and the fear on her face made her look more like a child and less of a teenager.
"What is it you want to do? We cannot do anything."
Waverly panicked at those words. What could she do? Think! Think! Think!
Just then, the screaming came - from everywhere. Survivors bolted out of their houses, shouting and wailing from the death of their loved ones and pleading for help only to find that even their neighbors had suffered the same fate. Soon, the streets were flooded with people, pulling their dead relatives out.
"Oh, Waverly. This is very terrible, very terrible." Cassiope cried, tears gushing from her eyes onto her face. She was visibly terrified and had not let go of Waverly's arm ever since they arrived at the bell tower.
Waverly looked up at the moon, feeling conflicted. Her mother would not do anything to help because nobody worshipped her but then it would not hurt if the people were made to think that Selene had come to their rescue.
She suddenly turned and took hold of Cassiope's face. "You trust me, don't you, Cassiope?"
Cassiope looked shocked by the sudden contact but she nodded affirmatively. "Yes. Yes, i trust you very much. I leave my mother plant with you all the time, i do. If something bad happens to it then something bad will happen to me, but you never let any harm come to my mother plant so. . ."
"I'm going to do something. . ." Waverly interjected and faltered, searching for a suitable word. "Very new and i need you to promise me. Promise me that you will do exactly as i say."
Cassiope nodded quickly. "Oh yes, yes i promise. As long as we can help everyone."
Waverly nodded as well. "Alright, alright. First we. . . we need to find out what the problem is. I need you to go down there and find out why people are dying in their sleep."
Cassiope made a beeline for a man only a foot away from the edge of the wall bridge. He looked solemn but it seemed that he had not lost anyone in the tragedy.
Waverly peered over the edge of the wall and watched as Cassiope questioned the man. He was a Vestonian refugee and probably a lonely one. In a few minutes, Cassiope was back in front of Waverly.
"He says he overheard the people say Intocuses. . ." She faltered and bit her lip for a second then corrected herself very slowly.
"In-cu-bu-ses. . . trap their beloved in dreams and kill them through it." She reported. Her face went pale as she spoke.
Waverly suddenly realized. "Nightmares! Incubuses are Nightmares."
It was then she spotted them - the Incubuses - creatures like spectral skeletons cloaked in black shredded fabrics down to their non-existent feet. They had skeletal limbs and faces, floating across the sky like shadows from a passing bird and wherever they went a curdling scream followed.
HalfHyde had taught her about those a long time ago. Incubuses were creatures that served Nysus, the god of nightmares. He only used them when his sole target was to kill a person or a group of people in their sleep. Waverly shuddered at the thought that now, there were possibly more than three million Incubuses infiltrating the realm.
She racked her brain further. HalfHyde had also taught her that the only way Incubuses could be banished entirely was through any sacred glyphs of the gods. They were creatures of death invoked by symbols and so they could only revoked by the same. She suddenly knew what to do.
"What do we do now?" Cassiope urged.
Waverly pointed to the tower where she would be away from sight and they both ran to it. She stood where the moon shone directly on the bell.
"Keep watch." She ordered then took a few deep breaths and began to focus intensely on the moon.
"What are you doing?" Cassiope asked, leaning slightly into Waverly's peripheral vision.
"Writing." Waverly replied, her gaze still fixed forward. Cassiope frowned at her answer and looked ahead then gasped. Up above, a set of ancient symbols were blazing to life in the sky curated by the light of every twinkling star above and the moon itself.
Waverly concentrated hard. She had seen Lunoglyphs and Luno-rouns before. They were tattooed all over Selene's skin and even without realizing it, the countless times she had stared at her mother's arms and bare neck had ensured that the writings were permanently sculptured in her mind.
Lines, curves, symbols and funny strokes joined together to form a Lunoglyph and no sooner had Waverly started than the air began to fill with surprised gasps and shouts. Her forehead began to burn as the rouns filled the sky but their appearance did nothing to block out the moonlight. Instead, each glyph became glazed with bright light and began to find its way into every house. As each one left, another took its place.
Cassiope gaped at Waverly as the latter stood still, focused on the moon, her eyebrows twitching as she orchestrated the incredible task of writing without her hands.
"Is this the plan?" Cassiope asked in bewilderment.
Waverly strained to keep her focus. The heat in her forehead began to spread throughout her temples and over her skull. An overpowering giddiness seized her and her body inclined forward but Cassiope quickly intercepted by placing both hands atop her shoulders.
"I will keep you steady." She said.
Waverly worked faster, conjuring three lunoglyphs at a time instead of one. She wanted to get the symbols into every single house in the realm to prevent the Incubuses from attacking the survivors but it proved to be very difficult. She could possibly pass out before the job was completed but she could not let herself lose strength so easily. Many people would die because of it.
But the more lunoglyphs appeared, the more Waverly's skin heated up. She fell on her knees and Cassiope firmly held on to her.
"I have you." She strained. Waverly's weight seemed to have suddenly doubled.
The lunoglyphs multiplied tremendously, zipping like bees into every house with jetstreams of energy behind them. They found fixtures on the floors, roofs and walls of every home and burned into them. As this happened the Incubuses wailed and streamed out from the houses, dissolving into black mist.
Waverly slumped backwards when the last of the Incubuses disappeared. Her eyelids had gone heavy and the hotness she felt coursed rapidly from her head to her feet. She was faintly aware of her surroundings as she drifted weightlessly into a void of light.
"Waverly?" Cassiope called, trembling all over. She whimpered and stood up then floated toward the wall bridge, peering over it in search of anyone who could help out but there was no one. And ontop of that, she had been warned beforehand to keep shut about what had just happened. She panicked, biting her thumb and trying to come up with a solution to Waverly's condition.
Suddenly, she remembered someone. She ran over to Waverly and gently pulled her up. It was harder to travel when a second party was asleep and heavier than normal but Cassiope managed it. She dragged Waverly through the colorful portal and into the other side where a large tree stood in the middle of a swamp.
Cassiope quickly spotted the brothers. They were running helterskelter, assisting their neighbors bring out their dead. She gently laid Waverly against the mailbox and floated toward Dermot first. He was in a frenzy and he carried a child with him whose skin had gone ashy and broken like half dried clay from a potter's workshop. The child was missing one ear and a hand.
Cassiope recoiled at the sight of the child then reluctantly tapped Dermot on the shoulder. He turned his head to face her.
"Come to help as usual, Cassiope?" He asked in a hopeful but hurried tone as he placed the child into the arms of another Elf.
Cassiope shook her head gravely. "No, not now. I need your help, i do."
Just then, a panting Diarmaid ran up to his brother and pointed to a beautiful house half covered by gardens with an open canal through which water passed.
"Marilis and Teth. Donna, Isolde, Rael and Varvara."
Dermot's face went slack with sadness and fear. "All dead?"
Diarmaid nodded gravely. "Not a single survivor."
Cassiope tapped Dermot on the shoulder again, more urgently this time. He turned to her but his attention was immediately taken by an elderly Elf who grabbed him by the arm.
"My boy." The man sobbed.
Dermot nodded solemnly and followed him. Cassiope stuttered in an attempt to call his name but she did not know it. She faced Diarmaid and grabbed him by the shirt but he too was occupied with lifting a young dead girl whose mother refused to let go of her.
The Elves were placing their dead in rows and covering them up with a dark red material printed with Elvish designs. The wails and cries of every survivor filled the entire realm. Even the foreigners grieved because Humans, Fire Mortals, Gypsies and Hammits alike had not been spared.
Cassiope turned a full circle, searching for whom to ask for help. Her gaze traveled to Waverly who was well away from all the commotion and far from sight. The nature spirit gasped when she saw that Waverly had fallen face flat on the ground and the mailbox she had been leaning on was slowly melting to wreckage.
The nature spirit gave a loud shriek when a glop of melted iron from the pole plopped down onto Waverly's arm. She hurried to Dermot and pulled his hair with much force.
"Ow!" He cried out and grabbed his hair then turned to her. "What was that. . ."
Cassiope took his arm and roughly pulled him away from the crowd, pointing toward the swamp. "Waverly needs your help."
Dermot's eyes bulged. "Oh no, no, no! Not you too."
He hurriedly sprinted toward the swamp.
"Diarmaid."
Diarmaid heard his name and joined his brother. Dermot arrived first and screeched to a stop near Waverly. He kicked away the melting mailbox although quite shocked at how it had come to such ruin and bent down to pick her up. The burn on her arm was slowly healing itself.
Diarmaid arrived as well. His face paled instantly. "Is she. . .?"
"You must be careful! Her skin has become very. . ." Cassiope warned.
"Ouch!" Dermot winced and retreated his hand. Waverly's skin burned like a thousand coals.
"Hot." Cassiope completed.
Dermot reached for her a second time and carefully wrapped his arm around her torso. Her head lolled to the side and her silky night wear smoked but her skin was not ashy and she was not missing any body parts.
Dermot looked up at Cassiope, a bit relieved and a bit confused. "What happened to her?"
Cassiope made to speak then thinned her lips. It was obvious that she contemplated what to say and what not to say but whatever it was she settled on, she seemed to be greatly discouraged by it. Her face creased pleadingly.
"I. . . I should not tell. I promised not to."
Diarmaid's eyebrows knotted into a thoughtful frown. "Did she have anything to do with those glyphs that appeared out of everywhere?"
Cassiope looked a bit alarmed that he had guessed but she slowly nodded.
"It's okay, Cassiope. We know that she can do things like that." Dermot said in a strained tone as he made to stand up with Waverly in his arms. "I don't remember her weighing this much before."
"The writing did that, it did." Cassiope added thoughtfully.
Dermot turned to his brother. "Go on, help the others. I'll handle this."
Diarmaid nodded, his eyes still fixed on Waverly then he turned and bolted.
Cassiope helped Dermot bring Waverly into the house by creating a portal as climbing up the would take up much time. He placed her on his bed and provided a bowl of cool water, a washcloth, some of Diarmaid's pillows and a cup of drinking water for when she woke up. He padded across her head and neck with the wet washcloth in the hopes that her rising temperature would reduce.
"Tell me exactly what happened." He requested. The nature spirit narrated in full how she had found Waverly lying on broken pieces of her bathroom door, their trip to the bell tower and the manner with which the Lunoglyphs had been created.
"Her eyes? She did all of that with just her eyes?"
"Yes. There was no quill, no ink, no parchment. She only looked at the moon, she did. Looked very very very hard. And i thought that she was only seeing dancing people in it. I would have liked to see dancing people too."
Cassiope rambled on but Dermot had stopped listening. He carefully lifted Waverly's eyelids with his thumb and saw that her eyes were glazed silvery white making her two-tone irises even more dangerous and oddly appealing. Her pupils had dilated. Each one looked like a twinkling star and it thrummed with a silent rhythm.
He let her eyelids drop and heaved a sigh.
"I hope you are alright by morning because it looks like there is nothing i can do about this." He whispered quietly then began to smoothen out her hair.
He turned to look to the wall on his left where a black patch like that of a burn bore a glowing glyph. It was one of a half moon hidden halfway behind the faded outline of a temple. Dermot did not understand it but it made him feel protected. The Incubuses had not gotten to him and his brother because they were both miraculously still awake during the time of the attack.
Cassiope inched closer. "Will she be alright in the morning?"
Dermot gave a single nod. "Of course she will be. She's Waverly, remember?"
Waverly felt her consciousness drift back slowly; first in the form of a warm feeling around her torso then in the form of soft twittering sounds and a wet item on her skin. Her eyes opened slowly and she saw through her eyelids the dark shade of a material on her forehead. She reached for it and pulled it away then reached for the warm object around her middle and pulled it to her face. It was Dermot's hunting cloak. She glanced about and immediately recognized where she was.
"Oh!" Someone shrieked excitedly from behind.
Waverly felt the figure slam into her with a powerful hug. She did not need to be told it was Cassiope.
"You have woken up at last then. I was very worried, very worried. It is good to see you, friend Waverly." Cassiope said in a tone that proved she had truly been worried.
"Good to see you too." Waverly chuckled.
"Are you alright now? You do not burn anymore, do you?" Cassiope asked, feeling Waverly's forehead.
"I am fine and," Waverly picked up the wet cloth. "This made sure the fever went away."
"Oh, yes. Dermot stayed up all night making sure you are fine." Cassiope announced.
Waverly's gaze fell as a warm feeling spread across her chest. She looked up. "Where is he and Diarmaid?"
Cassiope looked demure. "They have gone to witness The Crossing."
Waverly suddenly remembered the events of the previous night and felt strangely overpowered by guilt. "I could not save them all. I was. . ."
Cassiope placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. "You saved the rest of us. And even though only a few of us know it, we are grateful for it."
"Is anyone. . ." Waverly paused, her heart ticking as if on the verge of explosion. "Is anyone else i know dead?"
Cassiope shook her head. "No. The purple haired girl is fine and the big girl too and the handsomest boy and the other boy that follows the purple haired girl around. . ."
Waverly nodded with a light chuckle. "Okay, alright. That is good news." She stood up from the bed and stretched out with caution but the pain in her spine had also disappeared.
"How long have they been gone?"
"Dermot and his brother left since dawn. They stayed longer for the feast."
Waverly suddenly looked perplexed. "What feast?"
Cassiope stood up, twiddling her thumbs like she usually did whenever she felt nervous.
"Well. . . It is because. . ." She nervously pointed to the Lunoglyph on the left side of the wall. "Of that. It is everywhere in every house in the whole realm."
Waverly stared searchingly at the symbol then nodded. "Yes i believe it is. But what about it?"
Cassiope placed her hands behind her back.
"Everyone is thinking that Selene made those. The King has now held a very big feast in her honor in his palace."
Waverly felt a small smile creep into her face and quickly turned to hide it. She gave no reactions and said nothing afterwards.