A Thing of Nightmares [Renee and Ursula]

[Axel Rosen]

Yet another night is coming to an end and Axel can feel the presence of the sun rising over the horizon and through the trees. Luckily, he is inside, though it won’t be long before he can no longer fight sleep and has to go into a slumber. Sometimes he wonders if other vampires go to sleep like he does when the sun comes up. It’s not like the rising sun has supernatural power on him, he gets almost claustrophobic within the walls of his apartment if he can’t leave for long periods of time. So the best way to get rid of this feeling of being trapped is to go to sleep and make it vanish into the dark space of sleeping. The problem with sleeping, as he knows is, his dreams are only partially better than the walls closing in on him. Sure the things in his dreams, he can fight, but they could catch him, kill him. He doesn’t want to think about what could happen if he were to die in his dream. Would he, as a vampire now, just cease to exist? Would he unravel at the edges and turn to dust. It’s a question he’d rather leave unanswered.

Still, because his dreams are better than feeling trapped, Axel makes his way over to the bed. He’s not at West towers, but he’s sure that when he wakes up that might be where he gets to. Nix has this way of summoning him to her whenever she knows he’s been transported (by whatever does it) to the place he was turned. Folding the blankets back he turns off the light next to his bed and then crawls into it. The Veil tower apartment always feels so quiet now that all of his childer have moved out, but in a way that’s good. It means that they can take care of themselves and he’s taught them the proper way to be a vampire. Renee, hasn’t had any more violations since her last one, which makes him grin. Ursula has never, as far as he knows been on this list. They’re all a little quiet but other than that, they seem fine. Laying back he starts to drift off. He breathes in and out slowly, reaching a meditative state and then falling into sleep. Finally as he falls into a deep sleep, the darkness around him starts to fade into the dim light of the far star. The dream world. The planet with two stars.

As his eyes adjust to the blue glow of the far star, he realizes that the red giant isn’t in the sky at the moment. He wishes he could keep better track of the days and cycles in this world though he has no means of doing so. Every time he appears here in this world, it’s always in a different place, his eyes look around. He can see the floating ziggurats, the purple leaved trees, etc. His fingertips run down the rags that he’s wearing on his body, clad in peasants clothes, but healed from the last time he cut the scar into his forehead. Little does Axel know, but he’s about to pull two others out of their dreams and into his own. He hasn’t quite figured out that it is he that is doing this or what is really going on. He thinks that it’s just his mind messing with him. Once he gets moving he finds a small village on the outskirts of one of the rivers. The locals call it Kathermiz River. He’s sure that it’s less infested that most waters, or the people that live here wouldn’t drink from the waters. Of the several run down ‘homes’, Axel finds one that doesn’t have one in it at the moment. He steps in, looks around. There is a door wide open in the distance. The door is pitch black though the sun is shining far start is shining like a moon outside.

Every now and then he looks to it, noting that it looks just like the door he went through when he ended up in Toronto with Nix in his last dream. Standing from the worm-eaten chair, he walks over to the doorway and pokes at it. His finger breaks through the darkness but he has no idea where the door leads to. He would only assume that it goes outside. Axel continues to peer at it.

[Ursula Wolfe]

The night had been the same, a run through the sewers, hunting the things that tried to hunt vampires, hunters and their buddies the paladins. Then a quicker run through the lobbed of her apartment building ending at the shop that was there so that she could sell the things she had collected and then bank the money into the Atm no more than a step or two outside if the shops. Once she had finished that she had moved up into her apartment, checked the net, made an announcement and then shut things down and went about the usual things she did when she was tucked away.

The first of those things hand been to gather the herbs growing that she needed for rituals, then to take stock of everything she had both on her and in her lockbox - she really needed another one of those - before stripping down for a shower to get the grime of the sewers off her skin, as well as the blood and guts of the men and women that she had slain and left decapitated or dismembered under the streets. By the time she was done the sun had already begun to rise, to take back ownership of the sky for the next 12 hours. It was at this time that she got to make a choice, or rather she just did make a choice.

Would she grab one of the many tomes she had acquired from Jesse and start going through them, studying them, trying to figure out the things before she even attempted to pull them off? Or would she just say to hell with rituals and just get some sleep for tonight. Normally, when Jordan wasn't home she did rituals, but tonight she felt a bit more exhausted than usual so she said to hell with rituals, bed sounds better. And off to bed she went.

As she curled under the blanket, her eyes closed. It wasn't long from then that she had fallen into a deep sleep. A sleep that was usually dreamless. Something she was usually thankful for. Tonight though she had a dream that had become recurring ever since she had noticed that when she grew angry or annoyed her eyes shifted from that of their normal crystal blue color to that of a deep golden amber color, the color of a wolf, she had wolven eyes when she was pissed. From then on she began to envision herself running through a forest, tracking, hunting, but she wasn't in her usual form. No, when she had this dream she realized that she was often in the body of a great black wolf. Prowling, taking down prey. It was one of those dreams that for some reason just stuck with her.

By far this was one of her more pleasant dreams, but there had been some where her uncle - now wraith - would flit into her dreams and she would remember the times when her family would throw large parties and he would waltz her around the dance floor under the pale moonlight. Yes, she had danced with the devil in the pale moon light. Tonight though, the moon, though full was bright, lighting up the forest for her hunting pleasure.

[Renee]

It had been a long night. Nothing big had happened and that was why it had been long. She had not gone to the bar. She had not hunting. She had been on her computer all evening but had not even done any hacking. She had not been sleeping much lately. She could not tell why but it was making her on edge lately. She had been looking up what was going on with her lately and she could still find nothing. I might of been the fact that she was a vampire but she could not be sure. She looked at the clock and the sun would be up soon, or maybe it was already up. She did not know.

She shut her computer off and made her way to her bed. She climbed in and warped the the covers around her. Moments later both Pan and River crawl onto the bed and snuggle up next to her. She closes her eyes and concentrates on the dogs breathing and there heart beats. Axel's voice is no long in her head. He was asleep by now and her animals where the rhythmic pulsing that pushed her into sleep.

The dream was starting again. She is in a strange place. She is in a field. There are wild flowers all around her. She can feel the warmth of the sun on her face. She opens her eyes and can see the big yellow sun over head. She is a vampire now and this should be killing her but as she looks at her flesh nothing is happening. She gets up off the ground and looks around her. Off in the distant she can see a house and darkness. It is as if the 'world' she is in now is cut in half.The bright, happy, almost loving side that she is on now and the dark, decrepit, death side she finds herself walking towards.

As she gets closer to the house it beginning to look more and more like the house she had grown up in. This sends a shiver down her spine. Back then the things that her father and the other men of the church did seemed 'normal' but now that she was older and out of the hell that she had been born into she did not want to go back, but something was calling her closer to the house. 'Renee...Renee...come child...Renee' She keeps walking forward.

[Paige]

Paige's night had gone well. Her temper was constantly kept in check by her routine, which had not been broken. Thistle was sitting near the door at work concentrating on the secret shadow gate. They greeted eachother knowingly, and Paige went to her cubicle on the third floor of the Groom Center. Artificial light, the occasional chirping telephone, and voices discussing the night's business were becoming commonplace. Even the occasional coworker who came by her desk to chat was starting to get halfheartedly smiled at by the intimidating woman. The smile never reached her blue contact lenses, but that didn't stop some people from trying. She wished that they would stop trying to make her happy. Happiness was not her goal. But what could she do? Tell them that she was too busy trying to survive? That she didn't feel like smiling anymore, and no, she did not want to talk about it? She needed their sympathy as much as she needed a burger and fries. .

She went over some company spending records for the construction project. The figures were adding up, and everything was going efficiently. Paige considered some of the things brought to her attention at the previous meeting. Tensions about her age and her ability to head the project had all but vanished now that the parking garage was complete. Its structural integrity could withstand quite the assault. Mr. Groom somehow had materials that had withstood the test of time. Not outdated, they had been preserved exactly because of their strength. The garage was not just a parking garage, but a fully equipped fallout shelter, complete with emergency exit into the metro sewage system. An impenetrable fortress, disguised and painted for everyday human interaction. Now with the next stages of development, the supervisors under her command were completely loyal.

The work night passed without incident, and Paige left quietly. She spent the rest of her time surprising blood thieves. Paige found them in clubs, and sometimes hanging out by the street. They spent a lesser amount of time in abandoned buildings. She slayed a few. Her work phone buzzed at her. Her alarm had been set to 4AM. She always went home at 4AM, even though Axel no longer imposed that curfew on her. If she did it out of fear, or the comfort of habit, was anybody's guess.

While Axel subconsciously pulled his childer into his dream, Paige had a choice. She possessed the same power, and as soon as her head hit the cushion of her fold out couch bed, she was at a spiritual crossroads. She felt Axel's world gravitating her own toward it, keeping it in close orbit, cradling her consciousness and trying to coax her to enter his realm. It would have been irritating, if it hadn't been so supernatural. Paige had only experienced this once, when she and Roderic had killed a man who he had killed before, in his dream. She was eager to understand, not her sire, though she could feel him close, but this strange gift.

Paige closed her eyes in her own dream, and slept a second deeper sleep. She dreamed that she was in another world. Her unfamiliarity with it and the link to her sire she sensed in it caused the irritable vampire to growl in the moonlight. Did he know that she was here?

[Axel Rosen]

Chants are being uttered outside the mud walls of the little hut that he is sitting in. The darkness of the doorway near him makes him wonder if he has this strange ability he keeps hearing about to pull others into his dreams. If so, then he has no control over it. The chanting outside continues, the almost religious chanting of those out beneath the two stars. They murmur things about the new Gods, though some of the lines sound sarcastic when they give these Gods praise. Axel knows that this is the first step to a ritual called the culling. It’s where the priests of the new gods come through and find those that renounce their faith in the new gods and then torture them before setting them ablaze to die under the moonless night. There are only two nights a month when the moons are no longer visible in the sky but rather on the horizon (if you’re somewhere you can see it.) He doesn’t notice Paige at first as he hears the lament of those outside. The chants turning into a dirge of those that are to die soon. Finally he turns his attention to the woman, the worry of the fact that it could be one of the Keepers causes him to reach out of his dream.

As he pushes his tendrils of thought out of his mind and into the mind of Ursula and Renee, he yanks them out of their dreams. He doesn’t know he’s doing this, but he also doesn’t recognize Paige in the shadows. As he rips the other two of his childer from their dreams and then he recognizes the woman. He grins at Paige, not noticing the other two just yet as he summoned them just behind his field of vision. He moves close to Paige and looks her over. He tilts his head to the side then hands her one of his two obsidian daggers. If there was any one person he would want in his dreams to help him kill the beasts and followers of the New gods that hunt him, it would be her or one of his other two girls. Jesse, he’s not sure he’d want Jesse to see this place. Even a Jesse of his own imagination and dream world. Slowly Axel is putting together that he can pull people into his dreams. Axel thinks for a moment, holding the knife out to Paige, “Here you go. We’re going to need this.” He shows her his own that he had crafted earlier in his life. It’s always the same place, but never really the same dream.

Turning around he notices the two of the other girls and then looks for weapons to give them. He frowns a little bit, because he knows that at least Renee is trained in martial arts. He’s pretty sure that Ursa is more firearms. He thinks about it for a moment; however, there are not firearms in this place. They never existed in his dreams. The closest thing that the world their in has to guns is maybe a crossbow and he’s only really ever seen one of those here. It was in the mountains to the North East - the Aar mountains a hunter without the mark and disease given by the followers of the new Gods. Some how that man saved his family from the wrath of Xagaljir, by some means. Axel doesn’t question, just knows that it’s possible. But still, he’s looking his other two girls over not sure if they would be better with a blade than him. But he doesn’t think they have time to test which of them would be better. He just assumes that he would be far better with a blade than them because of how much he uses his. He places is back in it’s home-made sheathe, before grinning at them.

“Well ladies, this is the first time that any of you have been in my dream all at the same time”, it’s true, because most of them have only been in his dreams by themselves before. Though it wasn’t really them like it is now, it was dream-them, created by his mind. These girls before him now are not figments of his imagination like they have been in the past. He just looks at them all. “That being said we should probably get moving, staying in any place too long will end up in us dying.” Axel has this fear of dying in his dream, and if he dies in his dream that he would die in his actual life. He would just stop existing. He used to think, as a human, that his heart would stop, but now he thinks that if he were to be killed in a dream he would cease to be. That his mind would interpret himself as dying and thus he would just die without his body having to. He’s afraid that it could be possible that he would just explode into ashes. The fear subsides as he continues this thought out loud. “There is a gathering happening outside and there is soon to be a priest outside the walls of this hut.

[Ursula Wolfe]

Ursula watched her prey as it munched on grass, clearly it hadn't noticed her as she crept closer and closer to the deer. She felt the first tug at her mind but she ignored it, creeping closer and closer and then, just as she pounced at her prey the tug became to much and she was pulled from her dream to another. It was disorienting and she stumbled a bit. That was when she picked up on something, she was back on two legs but her eyes remained that of the beast she was in her last dream. Her wolven eyes took in what she was wearing and smirked. It was what she normally wore when she was doing her rituals. The long peasant skirt fluttered around her ankles, her bare feet took in the temperature of the ground and the corset bound her torso tightly. Then there was her cloak, she loved her cloak, something that she had brought with her from her old life.

The red cloak danced around her, she reached up and pushed the hood back, looking at what was around her finally. That is when her brows knitted together and then lifted near her hairline. "Sisters?" She said as she looked towards Renee and then Paige and then her eyes shifted to Axel and she looked shocked to see him. She hadn't seen him in a while so suddenly seeing him in her dreams was a bit disturbing. "Sire man? What the..." she glanced around again, wondering what was going on but that was when he decided to let them in on the secret. Or at least give them a run down of what was going on. When he told them that staying put could end in death, she felt a chill run down her spine and outwardly, her body shivered. Thankfully though that didn't show in her dream self.

One thing she had taught herself ages before she even came to this city was the ability to control her dreams to a point. She was conscious of things that went on around her. He continued to tell her and her siblings what was going on and she found herself once again reaching back to take hold of the hood of her cloak, pulling it up so that only her ruby red lips and straight nose was visible. "Right, so we don't move. What about this priest? This Gathering?" Priests and gatherings reminded her of her past, when she and her mother and aunt would go to meet with the rest of their coven. She took a step to move to her sire's side, reaching for her hip and noticing that shockingly, she was wearing her master blade at her side. That, along with her coat gave her the security she needed to continue on this weird path that her sire had pulled her into.

[Renee]

She walk close to the house and closer to the voice that is calling her. As she gets closer she feels herself ageing backwards. She is getting younger. Before she knows it she is her five year old self again. She reaches the house and opens the door.She looks around and everything around her is in a state of decay. Dust and mold and fungi have clamed the home she once lived in. She hears the call again from upstairs and she turns to see a black figure at the top of the staircase. It is outlined in an strange light. She watches as the shape hunches over and moves out of sight. Her first thought is to turn and run the other way but she starts up the stairs. As she turns the corner she finds herself facing her family. She is no longer five and the white sun dress she had been wearing is gone now. She is now in black. She feels something run down her cheek. She was crying. She quickly wipes her tears away as her Sire talked. She was readying herself for anything at this point.

[Paige]

Paige nodded at Ursula's uncertainty. It was her, she was real. What's more, she would help protect them while they were forced to explore this strange new world. Her territorial protectiveness was at maximum here in the unfamiliar realm. She stalked to a window to watch the chanting going on outside, then toward Renee. Paige knew how it felt to live chanting obediently, praying to a god that would not save her. She also knew that Renee had lived a similar existence. She pushed her own unease aside in favor of being strong for her older sister, and walked to her side. She stayed close.

"There are a lot of them," she informed Axel. "Why are they here?" She made the mistake of assuming that, just because this was his dream, he must be aware of what was going on. And, since he had given her a dagger, Paige assumed that whatever it was wasn't good. Her fingers clasped the hilt of the weapon reassuringly. She hoped that their blood tasted sweet, even if this was just a dream.

[Axel Rosen]

A voice hit’s his ears. Ursula is starting to come to with what is going on. She’s seeing things that were not in her dream, and questioning them. Axel doesn’t understand though. He has no understanding of how people keep ending up in his dreams and acting so different than they usually do while they’re there. Generally people in his dreams, such as Ursula, Paige, and Renee are quieter versions of themselves. Axel often thinks, while he’s awake, this is because his mind has a hard time accepting talking to itself and just keeps the area around him quiet. Now, though, it seems that he’ll have to answer his own questions to which his dream-childer should already know the answers. He had only given them the information because they had appeared from air and giving out life-saving information would have been logical. Now, though, he’s realizing that they should already know this world, it’s dangers, etc. That is until Ursa asks her questions.

“You already know this.. Because you’re me and I’m you and you’re all in my head… but I’ll humor myself.” He pauses and then looks Ursa over, her slight change in appearance, but he lets it go. Perhaps it was just what his mind had made a mistake in projecting her a different way. This is the way he’s used to seeing her anyway. “If we don’t move, we could die, though there are four of us”, another pause as he starts thinking, “no, no probably still best to keep moving”, he keeps the information of the other beasts to himself. The things in his dreams that can only really be likened to that of monsters under the bed that grip the legs of mortals and pull them into an abyss. Only difference is that these creatures rest within the dream-realm and steal memories and thoughts. “The priest is coming to weed out the infidels that refuse to worship the new Godds.” His eyes look over to Renee and Paige before continuing, “And the gathering is their sort of sick worship where they openly torture and kill others.”

He looks to Paige, interrupting his own though, “And while yes, torturing humans is fun and dandy, I’d prefer to not be tortured by this cult if I don’t have to.” Paige, ever careful, observant, helpful and at times obedient. Like a soldier she gives a damn good status report, though it’s information he already knew, from coming out there to in here. They had been gathering while he walked, and only came in here because he knew that they would gather in a circle at the middle of the village. This little hut is on the outskirts. The only problem he can foresee with this current position is if the Priest brings others with him and they search the houses. They likely will, so moving now is a good idea. “Again with questions that you already know the answer to.” He sighs out and then starts to look around. “They’re here to be forced to worship the new Gods. Those that don’t die, those that do… could still die.” He thinks about the grim lack of leniency with the whole thing. “Other than that… I only know that we should move”, the male moves to the door, cracking it open to peek outside.

The light comes into the darkened room, and he tilts his head to get a better view. There it is. The beaked priest standing in the middle of the little village, motioning his green, sallow looking arms to get people to come and surround him. Each movement of his hand, more people start coming in. Two pairs of eyes, one set over top of the other, peering to the small mass before them. One set is designed, by the new Gods, specifically to find young that haven’t been marked with the disease of the Gods and give it to them. Most of the village is marked with it. The little scar above the eyebrow, blackened blood vessels here and there. It’s kind of sad. It’s one thing to torture someone. It’s another thing to make them suffer every moment of their existence, with a disease that puts their life on a counter that kills the infected at random.

[Ursula Wolfe]

Ursa let her eyes linger on her sisters until Axel's voice caught her attention. It wasn't so much him talking as what he said that was the real attention catcher. 'She already knows this'? 'He'll humor himself'? What in the hell was he talking about? And then it hit her, she glanced to her sisters once more, gripping her blade a little more, her thumb brushing along the hand guard for a moment before she looked back to her sire. Did he think they were figments when they could tell that they weren't. Ursa made her way over to Paige and then looked back to Axel with her wolf like eyes "Sire man..." she started quietly before falling quiet as he continued to let them in on the situation at hand.

He didn't want to be tortured by them? And the things he was talking about seemed almost, uncanny and unbelievable, even if she was a vampire with wolf eyes when she was angry or upset, even if one of her sister's could levitate. This was a whole new version of freakishness that left her without words. When he moved to the door she watched him ever closer, standing at Paige's side, gripping her sword a little tighter, ready to pull it and hack at whatever came their way. "Well then, we shouldn't be sitting here shooting the breeze, we should be getting the **** out of here!" She hissed quietly and moved to stand closer to him but still allowing him as well as herself room to move should they need to do some slicing and dicing.

"If we can take out the priest than his spell would be broken, the others would not be able to continue without him." She whispered, if it was one thing she knew, it was spells - especially spells done by priests with power like his. She almost wished she could have pulled her grandfather that was now a wraith - something she still didn't understand - into this dreamworld as well, with his knowledge of spells and voodoo, he would be a great help, but even before he had died, he had taught her things. Her mother and her aunt as well had taught her about the world of witchcraft of every kind. "Dark magic, unlike light, gets it's power by sucking energy from people instead of everyone channeling their own power into a single thought." She whispered to him, "Dark Priests are the Achilles heel of their spells. But the question is, do you want to attempt taking him out, get out of here or just stand here waiting for him to realize we are here spying?"