Lowell's lungs burned as he crested the top of the basement stairs, his legs pumping with frantic urgency. He burst through the door into the narrow side hallway, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts that echoed off the undecorated stone walls. Behind him, Bart's footsteps pounded against the steps, his breathing labored and betraying the panic they both felt.

  The corridor was dimly lit in the waning daylight. The basement stairs were in a small annex that connected to the commons in the center of the quad through a short hallway. That hall stretched out before them like a tunnel with looming shadows cast upon the walls. Every shadow shifted with insidious intent, as if in response to some fundamental, unnatural calling. Every sound, every creak of the old building was exaggerated into a potential threat.

  Lowell's heart hammered against his ribs as the unfamiliar experience in the basement mingled with memories of that recent dream: shortness of breath, feeling like a trapped bird, his pulse roaring in his ears. Pure panic.

  He scanned their surroundings for anything he might be able to use as a weapon, feeling naked without his sword. His mind raced through every possibility, each more hopeless than the last.

  The terror that had driven them up those stairs still clung to him. He expected, no, he knew what he would find waiting in the courtyard beyond the end of the hall. He could hear the sounds from where he stood: the scraping, the growling, the otherworldly sounds that shouldn't exist in a place like Dahncrest. His hands trembled slightly as his grip tightened on the broom.

  "It shouldn't be possible for them to manifest here," he thought aloud, his voice barely above a whisper. Not only was Dahncrest protected by aethryte pylons, large crystals that effectively created a mesh network of protection against magical phenomena, including the creatures that were attracted to and fed on it, but the arcane laboratories had additional wards and protections in place.

  Except Lowell remembered the sounds of magical practice from the training area, the ones the headmaster had gone to speak with the instructors about. Unlike the laboratories, it lacked the additional protective wards designed to contain errant magical energies. He had no idea what PAAR had been working on, but whatever it was, the thought of the training grounds being unprotected gnawed at him.

  He threw open the doors to the covered walkway that bordered the courtyard at the heart of the campus and froze.

  The warm sunlight filtering into the courtyard from above hesitated, just for a moment, as if recoiling from the presence below it. Lowell's mind struggled to comprehend what he was seeing.

  The courtyard between the academy buildings looked like a war zone. Chunks of stone and masonry lay scattered across the cobblestones, some still smoking with residual magical energy. The splintered remains of what had once been a heavy wooden door were strewn in every direction, some pieces the size of his fist, others reduced to little more than toothpicks. The door's metal frame, now twisted and mangled like a discarded toy, had been torn from its hinges and thrown against the far wall, leaving deep gouges in the ancient stonework.

  Broken glass from the training ground's windows glittered like fallen stars across the courtyard where the concussive force had burst outward. They caught and refracted that hesitant sunlight, as if in a vain attempt to combat the encroaching shadows. Scorch marks blackened the ground in irregular patterns, and the air itself shimmered with the aftereffects of whatever violent magic had torn through this space.

  And in the center of this devastation, standing amidst the wreckage like a dark god surveying its domain, it stood.

  A shape.

  A thing.

  It loomed in the courtyard, blasphemy given form.

  At first glance, the creature appeared to wear the silhouetted form of a wolf. Or, at least what the mind might imagine as a wolf within the context of a dream, despite its contorted shape and inconceivable structure. But the longer he looked, the more his eyes rebelled against the impossibility before him. This was not a creature that had been born. No. Far from it. This was something that had been assembled and forged in fear.

  Its body was a living contradiction, a mass of writhing shadows, eels that moved in sickening synchronization beneath a surface that wasn't quite skin and wasn't quite smoke. The creature's hide convulsed, each undulation revealing glimpses of the twisted coil of shadowy slugs beneath. Countless filaments of darkness knotted themselves into the approximation of muscle and sinew. Where a wolf's fur should have been, Lowell saw only the suggestion of texture, as if the creature existed in a state between solid and liquid, constantly reforming itself.

  The thing's proportions were subtly wrong. Its legs were too long, its joints bending in ways that defied anatomy. Its muzzle elongated and shortened with each breath, as though it were still deciding what shape would best serve to sate its hunger. And its eyes. Its eyes were not eyes at all, but clusters of luminous ocelli that pulsed with an alien intelligence, shifting from sickly green to hellish crimson as they fixed upon its prey with predatory focus.

  Possibly worst of all was the way it moved. Its movements were rigid and unnatural while at the same time fluid and majestic. The paradox between the two irreconcilable, yet coexisting. When it shifted its weight, its entire form appeared to liquefy, the shadow-worms that composed its body flowing like ink before snapping back into the rough approximation of its quadrupedal form, stalking forward. It left no footprints in the dust, only patches of darkness that writhed briefly before being reabsorbed into the main mass.

  Lowell's breath caught in his throat. His hands trembled, a cold sweat pricking at the back of his neck.

  It shouldn't be here.

  Not here, in the heart of Dahncrest, under the protection of its wards and aethryte pylons. And yet, there it was, as real as the terror clawing its way up his spine.

  The creature lifted its head. Its four glowing eyes, deep and hateful like shifting embers, turned in Lowell's direction. He felt their gaze sweep over him; they lingered just a moment too long. He was not an immediate threat, it did not have to concern itself with him for now. Still, those eyes burned straight through him, appraising, considering, holding him captive in their presence before discarding him. It was suffocating.

  A single word tore through the fog of Lowell's mind, unbidden but undeniable.

  Nightmare.

  The word crashed into him like a wave.

  The air in the courtyard tasted of sulfur and something else. Something that did not belong to this world. A fetid smell of decay and malignancy hung like a cloud, the stench filling the grounds. This creature violated every principle of earthly logic. Lowell could feel his skin crawling, his heartbeat stuttering as his body recognized the presence of something that existed outside the natural order.

  And his body remembered.

  This was not merely a predator. It was a monstrosity. A thing that lived its life in the shadow, wearing the twisted reflection of primitive fears to terrorize its victims.

  The creature's very presence dredged up the memories Lowell had buried deep, memories he had hoped to bury so deep he would forget them entirely and never be bothered by them again. His recurring dreams had already proven that to be a wasted effort, and now coming face to face with this living nightmare, the attempt seemed laughable.

  The screams. The fire. The sight of innocent civilians butchered by these monstrous things. His legs threatened to give out.

  Everyone in the Guild Marches had heard of nightmares: predatory beasts given form by fear and drawn to places where they could feast on errant magical energy. They were a well-known danger across the Midlands, a common threat. But this wasn't some forsaken ruin or a rift spilling aether. This was Dahncrest.

  The capital of the Guild Marches.

  It was supposed to be safe.

  And yet here it was.

  The memory came flooding back to Lowell, like a tidal wave crashing over him. The screams. The innocents senselessly massacred. The fire. The burning village. The feel of the flames licking at his skin... Lowell gripped the handle of the broom he was holding, trying to stop his hands from shaking. His knuckles whitened under the intensity of the grip.

  "Run," he heard the voice clearly. Now, just as he had been the one speaking it in his dream.

  He was frozen, unable to move. He was that child amidst the flames of a burning village once again.

  As it moved, Lowell watched it and got a good look at its face. Its two pairs of burning red hellish eyes, shifting momentarily to a sickly green and then back, focused intently on its prey as it stalked slowly forward. There was no rush, no hurry, to its movements. It was uncontested in this place. It could savor the fear exuding from its prey, drink it in. Its lip curled upwards in a mixture of contentment and eagerness. Spit and saliva, or the nightmarish equivalent thereof, dripped from the creature's maw that slowly opened to show a row of sharp dagger-like obsidian ridges. The ridges, or "teeth," were misshapen and uneven. The knots of worms had hardened into legs of pure muscle and the claws stretched from the nightmare's rough-shaped paws, clicking on the stone and other hard surfaces as it moved forward.

  "Run." The voice urged Lowell again.

  Across from the nightmare, on the ground and backing away frantically, was Helena Oxford. No matter how far she moved, the nightmare kept pace.

  Helena was a third-year student at Orus, a magical prodigy. Her family could have enrolled her at any of the capital city's guild academies, but they chose Orus for its storied history. Possibly because they believed her to be capable of surpassing even the legend of Irving Orus. Helena's familial status and her commanding presence had made her an instant celebrity within the halls of Orus.

  The Helena Lowell remembered, however, was a sharp-tongued brat with an ego as oversized as her family's reputation. Back when they first met, she'd barely spared him a glance before dismissing him as a "dirty orphan." That casual cruelty had stuck with him, the words lingering like a thorn in the back of his mind. Everything he'd heard about her at Orus since then only seemed to reinforce that image: brilliant, arrogant, untouchable.

  But the girl on the ground before him now was a pale reflection of the one from Lowell's memories. Whatever pride and superiority she once wielded had been stripped away under the weight of sheer terror. Her wide, glassy eyes stared blankly ahead, seeing everything and nothing all at once. She shuffled backward in jerky, uncoordinated movements, her hands scraping against the rough cobblestones and shattered glass, leaving faint trails of blood from where her skin had torn.

  Her staff lay discarded nearby, forgotten in her panicked retreat. The confident, prodigy mage that had commanded attention in every classroom was gone, replaced by someone hollowed out by fear. Her lips moved soundlessly, mouthing words she couldn't seem to find, while her breath came in short, sharp gasps that barely reached her lungs. The faint tremor in her limbs betrayed the last dregs of her strength, each instinctual movement more of a reflex than a conscious choice.

  Lowell could feel it, the sharp contrast between the Helena of his childhood and the one crumbling under the severity of the overwhelming presence now stalking her. She was no longer Orus' star pupil. She wasn't the girl with the gilded future. Not now. Not in this moment. She was just another fragile life on the edge of being snuffed out. And despite everything, despite their past, Lowell knew he couldn't stand by and do nothing.

  As Bart caught up with Lowell, he whispered urgently, "What is a nightmare doing here?" His gaze then flicked to Helena. "Brandt, that's—"

  "Helena," Lowell replied, his focus locked on the girl who was backing away slowly from the nightmare. "I know."

  Bart's voice was barely audible over the pounding in his chest. "Brandt, that's... that's not possible. She's..."

  There was a silence, what felt like an eternity in the moment. Lowell broke the silence finally, his gaze still fixed on Helena. "We have to do something..."

  Their voices had not been loud. Hardly a whisper. Still, they were enough to briefly draw its attention. Stopping, it sniffed the air, momentarily considering Lowell and Bart before disregarding them and turning its attention back to Helena. Lowell couldn't move, frozen as he had been in his childhood. Lowell could hear that same voice, the sound of his own call, yelling at him as a child. Pleading with him to run.

  Bart was right. If they didn't do something now, Helena would almost certainly be killed. Torn to shreds by that monster and the beast would turn its attention on them, or someone else.

  "Run," Lowell whispered as much to Helena who could not hear him as to Bart and himself. He was unable to hide his terror.

  Bart was too occupied to hear Lowell. He was looking in every direction, hoping to see one of the academy instructors. He tried to push past that all too familiar panic that had lodged itself deep inside of him, but the more he pushed the firmer it gripped him. It wasn't only Bart who was fighting against this paralyzing fear, Lowell and Helena were both experiencing it as well. An aura surrounded the nightmare, amplifying their terror.

  As Bart was about to declare the situation hopeless to Lowell, he watched as Lowell took one step, followed by another. "Hey, Brandt, wait—"

  Lowell was fleeing.

  Bart's spirit sank. Watching Lowell run away, he couldn't help but think that he was hoping for something else. That he would watch as Lowell would summon the same bravado now as he had earlier in the day, reckless, but heroic all the same.

  He wasn't sure why he had expected that, even when he felt compelled to run away as well. Nightmares only existed to kill and feed after all, facing off against one was stupidly dangerous. Bart knew this and yet...

  Bart blinked, suddenly realizing that Lowell wasn't running away from the monstrous beast.

  He was running toward it!

  Bart watched as Lowell's pace hastened, breaking into a full sprint. He ran directly at the railing that separated the covered walkway from the courtyard, building momentum with each stride. Without hesitation, Lowell planted his left hand on the railing's smooth surface and vaulted over it in one fluid motion, his body arcing through the air like a predator launching itself at its prey.

  The leap was breathtaking in its precision. Lowell's right hand never loosened its grip on the broom handle, and as he sailed over the barrier, his form was as perfectly balanced as a seasoned athlete. He landed in a crouch on the courtyard stones, absorbing the impact with bent knees, his free hand touching down briefly for balance before he sprang forward again.

  The entire movement took mere seconds, but it was executed with the kind of grace that spoke of years of training, of instincts honed in countless battles. Without hesitation, Lowell surged toward the nightmare, closing the distance between himself and the monster with determined strides.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The nightmare's reaction was instantaneous and violent. Its massive head whipped around with unnatural speed, its hellish eyes locking onto Lowell with renewed intent and predatory focus. The creature's maw gaped wide, revealing the rows of obsidian teeth that clicked together in a sound like breaking glass. A low, eerie howl, almost a moan, escaped from the creature's throat, a sound that seemed to vibrate through Lowell's bones.

  The creature's body language shifted completely. What had been a slow, deliberate stalk toward Helena became a defensive crouch. Its shadowy composition rippled beneath its surface as it tensed, ready to spring. The nightmare leapt backward with startling agility, its clawed paws scraping against the courtyard stones leaving deep gouges in them. It landed in its own low stance, its form coiled in anticipation of what this unexpected challenger might do.

  Lowell didn't hesitate. He surged forward with desperate determination. The broom handle felt solid in his grip as he brandished it like a weapon, its wooden shaft extended toward the creature in a defensive posture, forcing an additional length of distance between it and himself. In three quick strides, Lowell had positioned himself squarely between Helena and the nightmare, his body forming a barrier between the girl and the monstrous predator.

  The nightmare's eyes never left Lowell's face. It studied him with that alien intelligence, its head tilting slightly as if trying to understand this new variable in its hunt. The creature's breathing was audible now, a wet, rasping sound that carried the stench of decay and something else entirely foreign to this world.

  Lowell's own breathing was audible, his heart pounding as much from fear as it was from the anxiety he felt in the basement only a few moments earlier. This was nothing like sparring with academy thugs. This was a nightmare, a creature born of pure malevolence and magic. A creature that could kill a seasoned guilder with ease. A monster that he should not be fighting alone.

  He stole a quick glance at Helena behind him. She was practically catatonic with her own fear.

  Facing off against a nightmare, alone, with only a broom was either very heroic, or very stupid. Lowell was pretty certain it fell into the latter of the two categories. The situation had a certain ridiculousness to it that would have been comical under different circumstances. Here he was, a second-year student at a guild academy, standing between a terrified classmate and a creature that shouldn't exist, armed with nothing more than a cleaning implement. It was the kind of scenario that would make for a good story later, assuming he survived to tell it.

  For a brief moment Lowell was unable to hide a smile as he thought about the absurdity of it all. The nightmare's eyes tracked the expression, and Lowell quickly schooled his features back into something more appropriate for a deadly confrontation. But the moment of levity had served its purpose, cutting through the paralyzing fear that had threatened to overwhelm him.

  The beast held its position and narrowed its eyes as it regarded Lowell with something almost like curiosity. The courtyard fell eerily silent, save for the sound of Lowell's heavy breathing and the creature's wet, rasping breaths that carried the stench of decay. Beyond the academy walls, the distant hum of the city continued its steady rhythm, oblivious to the mortal struggle unfolding within.

  The nightmare began to move again, but this time it was different. Gone was the startling agility of its earlier retreat. Instead, it moved with deliberate, predatory grace. Its massive form shifted forward in slow, measured steps, each movement calculated and purposeful. The shadows clinging to its form writhed like living tendrils, and Lowell could hear the faint scraping of its claws against the courtyard stones as it advanced.

  Its head tilted, as though baffled that someone so small, so fragile, would dare stand in its path. But there was something else in those alien eyes now, recognition, perhaps, or the beginnings of predatory anticipation. The beast was no longer dismissive about this unexpected challenger. Lowell had intervened. He was not just prey, he was a threat.

  Lowell's heart was a drumbeat of unshakeable terror echoing in his ears. He could feel the drag of his past clawing at the edges of his mind again, the eclipsing grip of helplessness. The memory wrapped around his chest like a vise.

  Swallowing, Lowell squared his shoulders, gripping the broom with white-knuckled determination. He'd banished the fear ever so briefly moments before, but it wasn't gone. It would eventually return if he let it. Reprimanding himself silently, he pushed back against it. He spread his stance, trying to appear larger than he felt, though every fiber of his being screamed at him to flee. The creature's lip curled into a grotesque snarl, its jagged, obsidian teeth glinting in the dim light.

  Then it moved.

  The nightmare exploded into motion with terrifying speed, its massive form becoming a blur of shadow and malice. Lowell's combat instincts kicked in just in time, his body pivoting on pure reflex as the beast's claws sliced through the space where his head had been a heartbeat before. The whoosh of displaced air felt like a whisper of death against his skin, and he could smell the creature's fetid breath as it passed inches from his face.

  He countered with a futile swing of the broom, the makeshift weapon striking the beast's flank with a hollow thud that echoed across the courtyard. The horror recoiled with a snarl, more annoyed than hurt, but it was enough to buy him another precious breath. Lowell could see the teeth gleaming in the dim light as the nightmare's maw opened wide and then clamped shut, the jagged ridges scraping and grinding together.

  The courtyard became a deadly dance floor, every surface a potential weapon or trap. The ground beneath Lowell's feet seemed to shift with a mind of its own, each jagged stone and fragment of shattered wood threatening to unbalance him at the worst possible moment. His boots scraped against the cobblestones as he backpedaled, the sound of his own breathing harsh in his ears.

  The creature's strikes rained down with relentless fury, each attack faster and more powerful than the last. Lowell weaved through them like a man possessed, his body moving on pure instinct as he narrowly avoided death with each evasive move. The nightmare's claws left deep gouges in the stone where Lowell had stood moments before, and he could feel the heat radiating from the creature's hive-worm composition as it passed within inches of his skin.

  Lowell could feel the strain beginning to creep into his muscles, his arms growing heavy with each defensive swing. But he forced the fatigue from his mind, pushing his body harder than he'd ever had to before. There was no time to slow down, no time to pause, no time to think. There was only the dance of survival, the constant rhythm of attack and counterattack that would determine whether he lived or died.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Bart frozen, staring in wide-eyed horror.

  The nightmare's next attack came faster than Lowell expected, and he barely managed to deflect it with a last-second parry. The broom splintered slightly under the force, a fracture beginning to form in the wooden shaft. In that split second of reprieve, Lowell made a calculated gamble.

  "Bart!" he shouted, his voice strained but commanding. He spared the briefest of moments to look in Bart's direction, knowing full well that the momentary distraction could cost him everything. The creature's attention was suddenly drawn in the direction of the other student. Lowell used that brief opportunity to reposition himself, the broom handle creaking ominously in his grip. "Get Helena out of here—now!"

  The beast's gaze flickered between Bart and Lowell. Lowell couldn't tell if it was weighing the tactical advantage multiple targets might have over it, or which student it should devour first. Either way, Lowell didn't give it time to decide. He lunged forward with desperate determination, slamming the broom into its snout with all his strength. The creature's head snapped back to him in a vicious bark and snarl, its full attention refocused entirely on Lowell. Its eyes burned with renewed fury.

  The impact sent shockwaves up Lowell's arms, and he could feel the broom handle threatening to shatter completely. But the gamble had worked. The nightmare was locked on him now, its predatory instincts overriding any other thoughts it may have had previously. Lowell braced himself for the next assault, his muscles screaming with fatigue. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up, but he'd be damned if he let it claim anyone else today.

  Lowell's call to action freed Bartholomew from his trance. The words cut through the paralyzing fear like a knife through butter, though Bart couldn't help but notice the irony of being rescued by someone who was currently fighting for his life with a cleaning implement.

  The whole scene was ludicrous in a way that bordered on surreal. Here he was, frozen in terror while Lowell battled a nightmare with a broom, and somehow Lowell was clear minded enough to be the one giving orders.

  Bart's mind raced through a series of increasingly ridiculous thoughts. He was the first-and-only son of the Allston Merchant Family, for crying out loud. His ancestors had probably faced worse than this. Well, maybe not worse, but certainly different. Probably involving ledgers and angry customers rather than literal nightmares with gnashing shards of obsidian for teeth, but the principle was the same. You didn't let fear stop you from doing what needed to be done.

  The realization hit him like a bucket of cold water. If Lowell could face down a nightmare with nothing but determination and a broom, then Bart could certainly manage to get Helena to safety. It wasn't as if he was being asked to fight the thing himself, after all. Just grab the girl and run. Simple enough.

  With that thought, Bart pushed his fear down as far as he could manage, which wasn't very far, but it would have to do. He rushed out onto the covered walkway and followed roughly the same trajectory Lowell had taken only moments before. Bart, not as graceful as Lowell, raced to the few steps that led down to the recessed courtyard instead of vaulting over the railing like some kind of acrobat.

  As Bart entered the arena of death, though he stayed as far away as he could while acting on Lowell's command, the beast's attention again shifted focus. This time, to Bart who was racing toward Helena.

  "Shit," Lowell hissed under his breath.

  Lowell had been hoping to keep the creature's attention focused on him, using his aggressive stance and constant movement to make himself the primary threat. To this predator, Helena was vulnerable prey, and Lowell's defiance was a puzzle yet to be solved. But Bart's sudden appearance, his frantic approach, triggered the beast's primal instincts. Like a hawk spotting a rabbit in open field, it shifted, muscles tensing, and launched straight at Bart.

  The nightmare had been assessing and weighing the threat that Lowell posed up until now, but Bart's arrival changed the equation entirely. Now there were multiple targets, and the creature's predatory instincts overrode its tactical assessment. Lowell's gamble had backfired spectacularly.

  Bart's legs pumped on sheer willpower, driving him forward despite every nerve screaming to flee. Each beat of his heart echoed the primal terror that threatened to overwhelm him. His vision tunneled until all he could see was Helena's terrified form ahead of him. He knew the moment he faltered, fear would root him to the spot, and he refused to be a burden to Lowell.

  The nightmare's approach was sudden, its massive form hurtling through the air with an uncanny grace. The courtyard wasn't that large, but somehow it seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. Bart could hear the creature's snarl, the smell of decay hung in the air and preceded it like a wave of death. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to turn and run, to abandon this suicidal charge and save himself.

  But Bart didn't stop. He couldn't stop. Not now, not when Helena's life hung in the balance. Not when Lowell was counting on him to do what he couldn't do himself. The thought of failing them, of letting that fear paralyze him again when they needed him most, was worse than the terror of facing the nightmare head-on.

  So he ran. He ran with everything he had, in a desperate rhythm that matched his racing heart. He ran toward the nightmare, toward certain death, because sometimes courage wasn't about not being afraid. Sometimes courage was about being terrified and doing it anyway.

  Bart and the nightmare weren't the only two bodies moving in that moment, however.

  Lowell was also moving. Years of training with the Black Boars had honed his reflexes to razor-sharp precision, and like a clumsy beast, it was telegraphing each attack. The nightmare's leap was powerful, but predictable. Lowell had seen this move before, had faced creatures that relied on brute force over tactical thinking.

  He darted forward with the speed of desperation, his boots barely touching the ground as he closed the distance. The nightmare was fast, but Lowell was faster. His body moved with a grace that mirrored the creature's own. He could see the creature's trajectory, could calculate the exact moment when its claws would find Bart's flesh.

  With a powerful, fluid swing born of muscle memory and raw determination, he brought the broom crashing down onto its skull. The impact rang out like thunder, a sharp crack splitting the air that echoed off the courtyard walls. The nightmare's shadow-worm body collapsed where the wood of the broom struck, its form momentarily destabilizing as the force traveled through its alien anatomy.

  Staggered mid-leap, the beast crashed to the ground with a bone-jarring thud, landing hard about a meter shy of Bart. The impact sent shockwaves through the cobblestones, and Lowell could feel the ground shudder.

  It skidded, claws gouging deep furrows in the earth, and then snapped its snarling visage back toward Lowell. That strike had been enough to convince it that it would need to deal with Lowell first, before feeding on either of the other two students.

  "You'll fight me!" Lowell called out to the monster, his voice ringing with defiance and something else—the cold confidence of someone who had stared death in the face and lived to tell the tale.

  The nightmare roared in response, its eyes blazing with fury, but Lowell stood tall, his grip on the broom unyielding as he faced the creature.

  The nightmare swiped one of its monstrous claws again at Lowell, this time in retaliation. Lowell once again brought the broom to bear, deflecting the attack as he danced to the side, drawing the creature's attention further away from Bart and Helena.

  Thanks to Lowell, Bart had managed to slip around behind him and reach their fallen schoolmate. Helena was still shuffling on the ground, backwards, away from the object of her terror. Lowell Brandt was a force to be reckoned with, and Bart knew that he would do whatever it took to protect Helena.

  "Hey, hey. Are you okay?" Bart drew closer to her. She was mumbling something unintelligible and otherwise unresponsive.

  The nightmare lunged at Lowell once more, but he was ready. With a swift motion, he dodged the attack and brought the broom down on the creature's skull again.

  "Are you okay?" Bart placed his hand on her arm, trying to break through the fog of terror that had consumed her. Helena turned to look at Bart, the first indication that she was aware he was standing there and talking to her. She opened her mouth as if to scream, the stress of her fear having welled up so much that Bart's simple touch caused it all to flood her system. Before she could form any sound, however, Helena's body suddenly went rigid and then limp. Not unconscious, but locked in a state of petrified shock. Her eyes remained wide and staring, but her limbs had gone limp and unresponsive.

  Bart blinked, not expecting this turn of events. Now what?

  Bart quickly glanced back to Lowell, who was doing his best to occupy the nightmare and provide cover for him so that he could get Helena out of harm's way. Helena's leg had also been injured, he noticed; a deep gash ran along her thigh, dark blood soaking through the fabric of her robes. He was unable to tell quite how bad the injury was, but it looked serious enough that even if she had her wits about her, she wouldn't have been able to put any weight on it to walk or run.

  Bart placed his hands under Helena's arms and lifted her some, enough so that he could get leverage on her body and begin to move her away. Helena was tall, taller than he was, but she was also lithe. Still, Bart didn't have the upper body strength to carry her. So, instead, he suspended her as best he could and shuffled backward toward the covered walkway opposite where he and Lowell had emerged.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lowell watched as Bart dragged Helena to safety, disappearing behind one of the partial walls erected on the covered walkway. Despite the severity of the situation he found himself in, he couldn't help but feel a sense of relief that Bart and Helena were out of immediate danger.

  But more than relief, Lowell felt something else—freedom. For the first time since he confronted the creature, he didn't need to think only about defending. He could stop playing defense, stop worrying about collateral damage, stop holding back for fear of what might happen to Bart or Helena if he made a mistake.

  Without Bart's help, he would have continued to be at a disadvantage, forced to maintain his position between Helena and the nightmare to prevent the creature from simply knocking him aside and focusing on helpless prey. His tactics had been constrained by the need to protect her, limiting his movement and forcing him to fight within tighter parameters. Now he could focus entirely on the nightmare, could unleash everything he had learned without reservation.

  The creature seemed to sense the shift in Lowell's demeanor. Lowell could see the moment when the monster before him realized that its prey had become something else entirely: a predator in his own right, unshackled and dangerous.

  For the first time since this fight began, he allowed himself that smile from earlier. Except this time, it was not in response to some dark comedy playing out on the field of battle. It was a cold, predatory smile that would have chilled the blood of anyone who saw it. The nightmare had made a fatal error. It had given Lowell time to think, time to plan, time to remember who he really was.

  Now it was going to pay for that mistake.

  The shadowy beast remained a relentless threat, its presence a suffocating weight on Lowell's senses. He couldn't afford even a flicker of distraction. Suddenly, with a guttural snarl that reverberated through the courtyard, the creature lunged.

  Its claws slashed through the air with a velocity that blurred their jagged edges. This was followed in quick succession by the snap of its vicious obsidian teeth, aiming to tear into him.

  But Lowell was quicker.

  Instinct and trained reflex fused in a heartbeat, he twisted mid-step, dropping low as the monstrous swipe whistled over his head. The air crackled with the force of the near miss.

  Using the momentum, Lowell rolled to the side, feeling the beast's hot breath graze his skin like a furnace blast. He sprang to his feet in one fluid motion, heart pounding like a war drum in his chest. The creature's claws struck the stone where he'd stood moments before, sending a spray of shattered debris into the air. Lowell barely had time to steady himself before the shadow beast withdrew a step, but only to give it space for its next move, its malevolent eyes locking onto him once again.

  The nightmare's next attack came faster than Lowell expected, a combination of claw strikes and snapping jaws that forced him into a desperate dance of evasion. He weaved between the creature's attacks, feeling the heat radiating from its shadow-worm composition as it passed within inches of his skin. Each near miss sent adrenaline coursing through his veins, each successful dodge a small victory in this deadly game of cat and mouse.

  He could hold his ground for a short time, but he knew that he would eventually tire or be overcome. The creature was playing with him, trying to fan the flames of his fear and despair. Its attacks, at the moment, were meant to exhaust him and make him less dangerous prey. This was a far cry from the controlled sparring matches, where the worst outcome was a bruised ego or a black eye. Here, every mistake could be fatal.

  And being armed with only a broom for a weapon? Defeat was all but guaranteed.

  The familiar voice Lowell had heard in his dreams rang clearly in his mind, shouting at him again: "Run!"

  Lowell shook his head, defying that voice. "No," he said aloud as he dug his heels into the dirt and gripped the shaft of the broom more tightly.

  "Not this time. This time I fight." He raised the broom and charged.