Teleportation is rarely a comfortable form of travel, even in Equestria. Not only that, but the power expenditure required to go any significant distance is so absurd that it requires multiple unicorns to teleport one average pony as little as one town over.

That, of course, is only in respect to teleporting directly because what I will tenuously call the more ‘energy-efficient’ means of teleportation aren't really teleporting at all. Most of them involve stepping sideways, taking a short jaunt through hell, and them popping out on the other end.

Or in Sonata’s case, taking a brief skip directly under the Old Stain’s left nostril.

My ears are left ringing with the choking scream of Sonata’s cry as I land shakily on the sterile tile floors of Canterlot General, coughing and hacking as I try to wash the taste of ash off my tongue while I stumble out of the corner of the room.

“Hey Red.” Aria sits up in her chair and tosses the beat-up harlequin romance she was reading onto the end table. “Glad ‘Nata was able to find you, I couldn’t get you on your cell.”

“Yeah, the Dreamtime doesn’t get great reception,” I say perhaps a little more gruffly than I need to as I wipe my hands on my jacket. “What’s up?”

My tone puts a pause on Aria's normal banter, and she stares for a moment before continuing. Her previously relaxed posture is gone, replaced by tension in her shoulders and a wary expression.

“I uh… I wanted to talk to you about Tempest.”

“You and everyone else,” I snap. “So let me save you some time. Tempest is gone and per usual I’m the one that drove her away! She’s done fighting and that’s it, is that all you wanted?”

Aria stares at me for a long moment before standing up and nodding at the door as she shoves her hands in the pockets of her white coat. I flick my gaze down to Sonata who’s lying supine on the bed, her hale and healthy mental projection replaced by the shadow of her physical body.

Her cheeks are gaunt and sunken, and her eyes are half-closed and surrounded by hollow, bruised bags while her two-tone arctic hair is pooled thinly around her,

I reach out and brush a few fingers over her cheek, and she shifts to look up at me.

“Thank you,” I say softly.

She doesn’t speak. That much is beyond her most of the time, but she does nod, and I smile faintly as I draw back and move toward Aria. If there was one thing I’d give up everything for, it would be to make Sonata whole again. My sister is forever hanging between life and death, her soul irrevocably damaged by the touch of the Old Stain when it brought her Killer side to life.

I pass Aria who steps between Sonata and I to whisper something gentle before she fixes a modified oxygen mask over her face and tucks the blankets a little more closely around her.

Out in the hall of MedSurg, it’s quiet. At this time of night, there’s only the odd nurse walking the halls, checking in now and again on certain at-risk patients.

“What’s going on, Red?” Aria asks as she shuts the door to Sonata’s room. “If it’s about Tempest—”

“Fuck Tempest,” I hiss as I jerk a finger under her nose. “You knew.”

“Knew what?!” Aria puts her hands up as she takes a step back.

“Rainbow Dash!”

The color and defiance drains from Aria’s face as she glances around, then sighs and gestures for me to follow her. We walk for a while toward what I recognise as a small break room adjoining the hall. It’s empty, unsurprisingly. There aren’t enough nurses to make use of it tonight, or most nights. For being such a large hospital the place is perennially understaffed in terms of medical personnel, so most nurses just stay at their stations, even on their breaks.

“It wasn’t like I tried to hide it,” Aria says as she closes the door behind me and I drop into one of the chairs.

“Horseshit.”

Aria turns and glares at me for a moment, then the expression fades and she shakes her head as she sits down across from me.

“Seriously, it happened over a year ago,” Aria says. “It was before even you came back, and once she was discharged I put it outta my mind, okay? Even after you came back I didn’t think about it until months had passed and by that point why should I bother? We both know how you get around that bluebell bitch!”

“You should have told me anyway,” I say tightly. “Now, tell me what happened!”

Her chair creaks as Aria leans back, puts her fingers to her temple, and she lets out a low groan, then shrugs.

“Fine, fuck doctor-patient confidentiality, I guess,” she grumbles.

“She came in covered in open cuts—self-inflicted—along with a bunch of fresh track marks, and bloodwork so full of heroin that it would’ve made a rock star raise their eyebrows.”

Aria listed off the damage as if it were routine, and although I knew the story wasn’t going to be pretty just from having seen the state of Rainbow’s body, it still took me off guard.

“Her friend, the cute, squeaky one?”

“—Fluttershy—”

—yeah, she’s the one who called it in,” Aria continues. “But look, I never talked about it because it happened a while ago and you have enough trouble controlling your temper as it is, Red!”

“I—!”

Aria crosses her arms over her chest and gives me an arch look as I struggle to get my boiling rage under control. She has a point but she doesn’t have to be so damn smug about it. So I have a temper problem! Back in Equestria I was a pyrothurge! Having a temper isn’t just a tendency it’s practically a prerequisite!

“Yeah well, turns out there was a… development,” I say thinly through gritted teeth,

The expression of smugness melts away to concern, and Aria sits up a little straighter.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I lean back in my chair again and rub at my face. “So you know how all of the Survivors who came out of the Trials are twisted up, right? Rainbow carried some of it out too.”

“Okay, and?” Aria asks, leaning forward.

“And apparently she was so miserable that the Old Stain noticed her, except he didn’t grab her! He turned her!” I finish.

Aria stares for a moment as the pieces click together, then she blanches as the coin drops. She puts a hand up to her lips and from the way her eyes are flicking back and forth I can practically see the lines being drawn in her mind. She’s making the same connections I did a while ago.

“Which… which one is she?” Aria asks hollowly.

“The Narc,” I reply coldly. “Except she calls herself ‘The Blight’, and she’s a real fuckin’ monster, Ari’.”

“Did you kill her?”

And there is the sixty billion double-bit question. Although maybe a better one would be should I have killed her? She’s one of the Old Stain’s priests now. Rainbow, like me, is a Fogborn Killer, trueborn to the sole master of the Fog, but unlike me, she doesn’t seem to have an issue with it.

The Entity is the Father of all Killers, except Rainbow seems to have a pretty loose relationship with It. She’s acting more like an employee to a manager that she sort of likes and would probably have a beer with, but otherwise doesn’t associate with outside of work.

Leave it to Rainbow to treat the mutation of her body and soul like getting a seasonal job.

“No, I made a deal,” I say.

Aria’s jaw clicks open.

“We’re outnumbered so badly it’s actually hilarious,” I continue tensely. “Rainbow and whatever other Killer the Old Stain shunted through the Wall between here and there are hunting the Thief, not us, okay? So yeah, we’re allies now, and unfortunately, we’re all going to have to get used to it.”

“A...Allies?” Aria spits. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you have a better plan?” I ask, gesturing out toward Canterlot. “Because last I checked we were getting our asses handed to us!”

“So you’re going back to the Entity!”

“I’m not going anywhere!” I snarl. “I’m taking what’s offered because it’s the only option we have!”

Aria stands and starts pacing, a look of absolute disbelief on her face as she walks back and forth between the walls of the cramped break room before finally stopping in front of me.

“And did it occur to you to ask any of us what we thought of this?” Aria’s tone is tight with rage, and I stand up to face her as she starts to shake.

“Yeah, it did,” I say quietly. “But it was the only choice, Ari’, and like I told you back in the basement of my Trial…” I lean in to meet her gaze evenly. “I’m not better than this, got it? I’ll do whatever I have to if it means saving you all.”

Of all of us who walked out of the Trial and thumbed our noses at the Old Stain, the closest pairs were Starlight and Sour Sweet, and Aria and I. No one could match the rapport that we shared with our partners, not even Tempest and I—before she split—were on the same wavelength.

Give me a choice between every weapon and spell in the world and an army to back it up, and having Aria Blaze at my back, and I’ll take Aria every single time.

She and I? We’re unstoppable.

That's why the look of betrayal on her face hurts so much.

“This is nuts, Red,” Aria hisses.

“It’s the only play, Ari’.”

She grits her teeth and crosses the room in a flash, grabs me by the collar of my shirt and drags me up into her face.

“On Noden's Oath if you weren’t my sister…” Aria snarls then turns her head to spit on the ground before looking back at me. “What happens when this goes south, huh? You think the Entity is going to be happy letting you go on your merry once he’s spit-roasted the Thief on those claws of his?”

I don’t move or resist, I let her handle me. She can’t hurt me if she wanted to, and even now, with her hands at my throat, it’s a little satisfying to note that my Killer instincts aren’t boiling up.

Not even my Nightmare side believes that Aria will really hurt me.

“Do you trust me?” I ask.

“You got some real fuckin’ nerve asking me that now, Red,” Aria snaps.

“Do you. Trust me.”

I say the words slowly, never looking away from her. Aria’s glare is incandescent. I can feel her hands shaking, and I get it. I really, really do.

“You know what happens if that Thing wins?” Aria demands. “It’s not just you! Even if that cosmic skidmark ignores the rest of us Survivors, if it wins then I lose every single one of my sisters!”

“I know,” I say quietly. “So do you trust me?”

Aria’s eyes are red and her whole body is wracked with shudders as tears well at the edges of her eyes. I can tell how scared she is. It’s her one great fear: losing her family. She lived that fear once in the Trials of the Entity when Sonata, then Adagio, fell to despair and were turned into monstrous Killers that hunted her for their new master, but against all odds she’d gotten them both back.

And now, here I am putting them at risk again. I’m taking a devil’s deal just because it’s the devil I know because I’m not sure I can win this fight against all these odds.

Well, not without sacrifices, and I’m not losing any of my family either.

“You know I do, Red,” Aria sobs.

“Then trust that I’ll get us out of this,” I reply as I get my feet under me and wrap my arms around Aria.

“This isn’t like the Trial,” Aria says as she lets go of me and rests her forehead against my shoulder. “The Entity knows the score. It knows we’re against it.”

She’s right. The last time we only got out of the Trial because the Entity didn’t know that Adagio and Sonata had gone turncoat. It didn’t know that I’d stacked the deck just enough to put his loyal Killers out of commission with a few well-placed knives to the back from their erstwhile allies.

Now, though, that ace is played. I don’t have anyone behind enemy lines to cause havoc, I don’t even have Equestrian magic to counteract the Old Stain’s darkness anymore.

“Tell me you have a plan.” There’s a note of pleading to her voice that’s nothing like her usual grim confidence.

Aria is older than me by orders of magnitude, but she’s also nothing like she has been for most of her life. After spending so long as the only magical being in a world full of mundanity, and then coming up against something that had the same distance in age and scope between her and it as she did with me, must be terrifying.

“I have… a gamble.”

Bitter laughter spills from Aria as she straightens out, shakes her head, then steps back while she looks me over with red eyes.

“For you, Red,”—she grips both of my shoulders tightly—“that amounts to the same thing.”

She’s not wrong there.

“So what do we do?” she asks.

I brush the wrinkles from my jacket and smile as I tug it straight. I may not have a lot, but I have Aria and Adagio and Sonata, I have my sisters. I have Sour Sweet and Starlight Glimmer and Redheart, my friends.

“Get everyone together,” I say. “Tell’em the score.”

“And then?”

I snort out a quiet laugh as I put a hand on Aria's shoulder and give her my best 'Discord-May-Care' smirk.

"Then—" I give her shoulder a squeeze "—we go gravedigging."

I wonder if I’m a coward for foisting off breaking the news that Rainbow is not only one of the Killer’s we’ve been tracking for months, but also our latest ally, onto Aria.

Redheart will take it better from her, though, and that’s probably true of Sour and Starlight. Adagio won’t balk at it, even if it wrong-foots her. I know her well enough to know that she’s no stranger to odd bedfellows when needs must. If Tempest were still with us I’d tell her myself, but that’s not an issue anymore.

I try not to think too hard on that.

Tempest was my rock for a solid year, but in all that time I think all I ever did was use her to prop myself up. Now she’s gone and, honestly, that’s probably a good thing.

For her, I mean.

It’s probably pretty bad for me.

The night I met Zephyr and fought the Legion was the last night I had projected my mind into the Dream. Now I’m fully manifesting, even though I know it’s risky.

Already it’s getting harder to control my temper and my instincts around normal people, and it was hard enough when I was keeping a distance between myself and the Nightmare and had Tempest to lean on. Now I have neither fallback. I was tits deep in darkness and getting ready to dive.

By the end of all this, I’ll be lucky if I'm still sane.

The Fog of the Dreamtime ripples as I flicker through the edges of Canterlot until I find the spot I’m looking for, and congeal out onto the roof. The building is old, like a lot of buildings in this part of town, and I make a quick scan of the area, skimming it for thoughts, before forcing myself fully into the Real, shedding my Killer skin, and tugging my phone out of my pocket.

//Ninth Precinct, homicide, right?// I shoot the text off to Aria as I look around for the roof access.

//Yeah, the call was made by his partner, Shining Armor.//

//Thanks//

I drop my phone back into my pocket and shift back into the Dream, weaving my power through the Fog and down, down, down, into the exhaustion-riddled minds of the police officers below me. So many of them were running on caffeine and uppers, and homicide had it the worst. With three purported serial killers on the loose, no good leads, and now an officer down to the one killer with a penchant for offing drug dealers, things are probably looking pretty grim.

Although knowing Canterlot, they’ll probably frame the late Detective Sterling’s death as some kind of heroic stand against the Narc while said killer was about to off some imaginary street dealer they’ll make up for the narrative.

Canterlot cops aren’t the worst in the world but… they’re still cops.

Homicide is easy enough to find. It’s the worst hit bunch out of a bad lot. I take a grip on the weary minds inside that part of the building and use them to slingshot myself through the walls and doors and barriers of the Ninth Precinct Canterlot Police Department.

My feet hit the old marble tiles of the floor and I immediately pin myself to the wall as the flurry of activity resolves itself around me. Detectives, beat cops, pencil pushers; anyone and everyone who makes the wheels go round in this precinct are running pell-mell and probably have been since Sterling turned up dead.

Voices and thoughts are a slurry of meaningless chatter in my ears. I can’t resolve any of it because I can’t focus on it. I don’t know enough about these people to get their thoughts in order, but I do know one of them.

At least a little bit.

I know his name, and that’s enough.

Shining Armor.

There’s a lot of lore about names and magic, but honestly? Unless you’re some kind of warlock who specialises in the ridiculously esoteric art of Naming magic, a witch who knows some really specific curses, or a literal daemon, then names are not all they’re cracked up to be.

Really, names have only one major use in magic, and that’s ‘Finder’ spells. If you’re trying to find something or someone, then the name of that thing or person is the best way to do it, hooves down.

So I focus on it. I use it like a keyword in a search engine, inserting it into my thoughts and from there into the world around me, filtering out the clamor until it’s just Shining’s name on repeat.

Shining Armor… Shining Armor… Shining Armor…

I follow the whispers through the precinct until I finally reach a small office with two occupants.

One is Shining Armor, I know him because I can feel his mind. This is one I’ve been looking for. The other is an older man, a captain by his rank pins, with dark, auburn hair, a complexion not unlike the marble tiles I’m standing on, all on a six-foot-plus frame.

“Go home, Detective,” the older man says gruffly, his voice oddly distant in Fog. “You’ve been here practically twenty-four-seven since what happened at Serenity, and you need to get some sleep.”

“I’ve slept, Captain,” Shining says.

Liar.

I can feel the tight grip of exhaustion closing in a vice around his skull from here. It wouldn’t take more than a slight push to nudge him off to dreamland.

“I mean real sleep, Armor.” The captain puts a thick finger up to point directly at Shining’s face. “Go home, crawl into bed with your pretty wife, and get some goddamn sleep, okay? You won’t do Sterling any favors burning yourself out.”

Normally the mind of a cop is a firm and unyielding thing. It’s not easy to push through the barriers of someone with a rigid mindset, but the more tired they are, the easier it is for me to get in, and Shining’s mind is like a fortress with its walls crumbling and the door hanging off its hinges.

Stalwart Stand… that’s the captain’s name. A good man by Shining’s estimation. A decent cop—one of the few—who's never been compromised and has always put the people in his area first.

A good gear in a broken system… the poor bastard.

Stalwart gives Shining the stink-eye for another half-second before nodding and turning to leave the cramped little office.

The moment he’s out, I turn back to Shining and sigh quietly.

“That’s rough,” I say softly. “Losing someone like that? Even if he was a dirty cop, it always feels bad to lose. And the worst part is that you’re not going to catch her… and on the very, very slim chance that you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Rainbow probably wouldn’t kill Shining. Not unless he was dirty too, which I doubted. Something about the jawline this guy is sporting, I think.

No, I’d bet my bottom bit this guy is clean as a whistle.

I watch him for a few more moments as he shifts through case files. It’s actually a little sad, watching him like this. I can feel the exhaustion and frustration bleeding off of him. He’s angry, not just at the killers but at himself.

“I feel you,” I say quietly. “But this isn’t a matter for humans anymore.”

It never was.

“Let the monsters kill each other, Detective.”

My claws press painlessly into his forehead before sinking into this mind to send Detective Shining Armor spiraling down into slumber on the heels of euphoric laughter that bubbles up from my chest.

I follow him down, riding the riptide of his sleeping soul into his private bubble of Dreamtime.

Everyone dreams in a different way, but there are small generalities that tend to hold true across the board. The main common ground is that people’s minds tend to retreat to their most comfortable places, which really backfires when you have a nightmare because that means something awful is happening in a place where you normally feel comfortable.

Not always, though.

Some minds, like Shining Armor’s, apparently, will be drawn towards places of pain and obsession.

My boots strike hard tile and, for a moment, I have to reorient myself because it doesn’t look like I’ve moved.

“Wow,” I mutter as I look around the dream-version of Shining’s office. “You even work in your sleep?”

I turn to regard Shining Armor who’s sitting at his desk which is far larger and wider than his real one. Scattered across the hardwood surface are dozens of case files, crime scene photos, witness statements, and all of the other paraphernalia a Detective would need to solve a case.

This is exactly what I wanted, though. A homicide detective might be assigned to a particular case, but realistically speaking there’s no way he doesn’t have his fingers in the pies of the other detectives dealing with the Legion and the Ogre of the East. I just thought it would be a lot harder to find the information, but I suppose in retrospect, all of this must be pretty close to the surface of his mind.

In reality, I know I should’ve explored this avenue earlier, but I just didn’t think about it. Partially that was because, until recently, I didn’t even know which, if any, of the crop of serial killers we’d been chasing down were Fogborn. Now, though, I knew what I was looking for, and while the Narc wasn’t going to be a target on my list for the time being thanks to our uneasy alliance, I needed all the information I could dredge up about the Legion and the Ogre.

“Let’s see what we’re working with here.” I bend over Shining’s shoulder to peer at some of the case files.

They’re meticulously organised, which doesn’t surprise me.

What does surprise me is when Shining picks up a picture from the Narc’s file, and it’s one that I don’t recognise. A girl named Tallymark. From the date, I guess she must have been recently identified, or maybe she’s just one that had been overlooked. Either way, I lean in to get a better look at the new victim.

Detective Armor holds up the picture, grimaces at it for a moment, then lowers it, and lying in the middle of his office, right in front of his desk, is the body of the girl.

“Wow,” I mumble as I step back and frown. “You really did a number on that girl, Dash.”

She’s got lime green hair with an undercut, a gray complexion, and from what I can tell she’s probably about five feet and some loose change. The night she died she left her home in an outfit that looks like the first search return you’d get if you looked up ‘goth-punk chic’, but the night ended with her looking significantly less attractive.

Her skin is pallid and drawn and her mouth and chin are stained with vomit. What were once soft, full cheeks are sunken and hollow, while her eyes are rolled back in their sockets. Tallymark’s small, delicate hands are curled into thin, arthritic claws, and her jaw is hanging open in a silent, endless scream.

Shining had obviously been on site for the real deal. No way his imagination conjured up these details. This is the kind of thing that burns itself into your mind, which it obviously did.

Seeing it like this shows something that the photograph of the body couldn’t quite convey. It’s something about the way her face is twisted just so, and the strain imprinted on her features at the moment of her death. Whatever it is, whatever Rainbow did to that girl the night she killed her, I know that Tallymark died screaming.

“You enjoyed this.” Stepping away from the desk and walking over to the corpse, I look down over the dead girl. “Rainbow… how far gone are you if this is how you started?”

As sickening as it is, a small part of me is satisfied at the knowledge that Rainbow never forgot about me. Kneeling down by the corpse, I brush my fingers over Tallymark’s warped face, and then down to the puncture mark just below her right breast.

Whether or not she knows it, the hate I inflicted on Rainbow back in my Trial is still in her. It’s still eating away at her like a slow, corrosive venom, chewing at her bones and heart and soul.

The corpse flickers before I can look over it further, and I glance up at Shining just as he picks up another photograph.

In an instant, the body of Tallymark is replaced by what I can best describe as a red slurry.

“OH GROSS!”

I stumble back as my knees where I’d been kneeling are suddenly soaked. A monster I may be, but I can’t look at that mess too long without feeling my gorge rise, and I turn away. That would be one of the Ogre—or rather the Oni’s—kills, it bore all the hallmarks of that thing’s unrelenting savagery.

“Not much to see there,” I mutter as I try to scrape some of the victim off of my trousers.

Unlike the body of Tallymark, there are no signs at all that the Oni enjoyed their work. This kind of brutality speaks to me of barely conscious action. This poor bastard doesn’t look like he was murdered, he looks like he got hit by a semi.

“I guess Billy probably would’ve left us looking pretty similar if we weren’t modified by the Entity,” I muse quietly as I turn back to Shining’s desk and try not to look back at the middle of the room.

What I really need is something specific on the Legion, though, since it’s pretty clear now that there’s no love lost between the Thief and the Oni.

For all I know, the Oni is a rogue agent. Maybe it’s serving the Old Stain… maybe. My gut says no, though. If that were the case, it would have a purpose, like Rainbow Dash. Rainbow is gathering Fog to try and make up for the power the Entity invested into my reality marble before I stole it, and whoever this new Killer is that Rainbow is working with is supposed to not only collect the Fog but deal with the Thief as well.

The Oni isn’t doing anything but wreaking havoc, which would make sense as a servant of the Old Stain if it were going after Legion, but that’s not the case. As near as I can tell, it only picked a fight with Legion when those three tried to poach on its turf. If anything, the Oni is more like a territorial apex predator than a capital ‘K’ Killer.

As troubling as that is, it does make them less of an immediate threat making them a comfortably tertiary problem that I can deal with once I’ve dealt with the main issue.

Back to the Legion, then.

I look over the swathe of photos pertaining to the trio while Shining continues to torment himself beside me. Why people do that I’ll never understand, but more power to them, I guess. I suppose it is his job, even if it is an exercise in futility.

“I’ll take care of this, Detective,” I say quietly as Shining Armor dreams of the dead. “Just give me some time, and then you’ll be able to get some sleep that’s finally free of nightmares.”

The Legion’s activities are collected with an expert hand here, and the signs of care are the same across the board meaning that, although he isn’t assigned to the Legion case officially, I’d be willing to bet that Shining had been the one to collate all of this data for his colleagues. He has a sharp, tactical mind… he’d have made a fine general a century ago.

All of the murders I’ve studied are here, but there’s more than that.

A grin etches its way onto my face.

Much more.

The Legion aren’t just murderers. They’re vandals. They tend to leave destruction in their wake regardless of where they go but that’s a hell of a lot harder for one person to track down in a city as big as Canterlot, especially when your quarry can move through the Fog practically at will. The grim fact of the matter is that murders are easy to find because they’re loud. Finding the vandalism and other signs of the Legion’s passage requires more boots on the ground than I’ve got.

But the Canterlot PD’s bloated budget means it’s got plenty of beat cops to do that for me.

The fact that I never considered this angle is galling. It should have been obvious, and I could have made progress so much faster, but regrets are for the living, and they do me no good now.

I scan the marks and reports. Dates, times, addresses; they all overlay in my mind like a three-dimensional map of the city. I can memorise the data now, such as it is, and collate it with what I know of their Fog-treading.

“Done,” I say as I look up from the mass of files to Shining Armor who’s kneeling over another corpse.

This one I recognise because I saw it just days ago on a slab in the morgue.

Sterling Standard.

Shining Armor is crouched over the body, staring down into the ruined face. The coroner over at Canterlot General must’ve done some touch-up work because even as broken as old Sterling looked in the morgue, he didn’t look nearly this bad.

Maybe it’s just the distortion of the nightmare. That and in Shining’s dreaming memories, the body is still fresh. I try not to look too closely at the gory remains as I join Shining at Sterling’s side, and crouch down beside them both.

“I’ll end this, Detective,” I say softly. “I promise.”

The coherency of the dream flickers minutely, and Shining Armor frowns, and his brow furrows like he’s fighting off a sudden headache.

Then he looks up, squints, and focuses blearily on me.

I have to admit. I’m impressed. Even as tired as he is, a part of his mind recognises my intrusion and it’s trying to alert him to it. To tell him that someone is in his mind who ought not to be. Most likely, his perception of me is just a hazy blur of color and shape—like the background of a dreamscape—but the fact that he sees me at all speaks volumes of his strength of will and character.

“Who are you?” He slurs, his mind still caught between the dream and the real.

I shake my head and chuckle.

“Just a bad dream, Detective,” I reply as I reach out and slice my claws in the fabric of his nightmare. “Now do yourself a favor… and get some sleep.”

The nightmare collapses, and Shining Armor’s mind falls into the dreamless dark of slumber. With as strong as his mind is, I wouldn’t be surprised if his next REM cycle rebuilt the nightmare, but at least this will buy him a few hours of true rest.

He deserves it.

As for me? I’ve got a grave to dig up and a map to build.

Author's Note

Leave nothing unchecked, there is much to be found in forgotten places.

Support me on my Patreon where you can check out chapters of my original novel, Bare Knuckles & Butterflies, as they're released!