When Dari had walked for about two miles east, she was almost out of breath. She had walked quickly, and the nights' activities seem to be taking its toll on her. It would soon be morning and she considered napping. She was probably safe at night. Either way, she needed rest.
The incident with the dream chaser seemed far off and there's no way it would have followed her this far close to sunrise. She was making excuses. She sat at the base of a large Incanta tree. She wasn't going to sleep. She was going to just rest a little.
The moment she sat down her eyes fluttered closed against her will. In the next second green eyes were right before her. One feline grabbed both her wrist within her mouth and the other bit one of her leg. This would have to do. They began to run as fast as the wind. Shock gripped the now terrified and confused Dari as they meandered around tall and short rocks.
Dari lost track of how long they were drag-running with her. She tried several times to grab onto trees, stumps and even rocks but the fact that she was being bounced made her too sore and disoriented to focus. She began to wonder if this journey was worth it. If she was counting right, she had been attacked at least three times in the last four days.
Two years before, an old fisherman had convinced her to take on the arduous feat of getting to the Mount Tikata Summit where she could enter the dream of the dream beast and kill it. It was important that she should be successful because half the world had already been killed by it's minions, the dream chasers. She was the only one who could do this. She was the only human who could dream walk so the fate of humanity was completely in her hands.
"Aaaaaaaaa!" she heard herself scream.
She rubbed her head gingerly. The beasts had let her down hard really suddenly. The pain meant that she was still alive, for now. She rubbed the base of her spine while simultaneously pushing herself away from her abductors. She stopped when her back hit a wall. She stopped then and dared to look away from the animals so she could survey where she was. She was in a cave. An unusually dark cave except for light from a fire glowing towards the back at another part of the cave. She could barely make out the animals that brought her here except for their unique silhouette and blazing green eyes. She could make out the smell of roasting rabbit seasoned with herbs, as well as the sound of crackling sticks from the fire. Her stomach betrayed the silence at her end of the cave. As if in response, the felines crouch low and they both started retreating without taking their eyes off her. Fear slipped down Dari's back like beads of sweat. The two animals walked until their rear touched each other. To Dari's surprise they didn't lounge at her. instead, they merged into each other and collapsed on the floor. For a short moment, there was no sound but the crackling from the back of the cave.
Dari moved forward to investigate. She squinted her eyes but barely adjusted to the darkness. The animals were gone. In it's place was an immobile lump which seemed to be lifeless, except for a vague shining from sweat on his skin. She reached out in the dark to touch the lump before realizing it had a humanoid appearance. She pulled her hand back a little too quickly and winced. The thing moved a little. She could hear its shallow breathing but had forgotten her fear in they midst of her curiosity. It didn't leap at her so she touched it, noting the soft skin which covered strong muscles. The muscles felt as if they rose and fell at even intervals about three times. She moved her hand lower only to feel it grabbed in the darkness.
She heard a raspy, "That's far enough dream walker," before she was thrown across the floor and hit her head. She had not hit her head hard but she was exhausted so she fell into a deep sleep.
The stranger shook his head and chuckled. He marvelled at how reckless the last dream walker was turning out to be. He lifted her and took her to the back of the cave and placed her in his bed. It was nothing special- just a mass of cloth from clothing he had acquired over the years. In truth, it was more like a nest in a den than a bed.
As he lay her down, he heard her say a name, "Scunta."
His eyes darkened and his entire body went rigid. He knew he had to let her sleep. It was risky but she had to learn how to fight in the dream realm. She had to be strong because the fate of the world was dependent on her and her alone.
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At mid-day, Dari was drenched in sweat. She had been like this the entire time she was unconscious. She might have been sleeping but she wasn't resting.
She sensed the presence of an animal watching her. The image of green eyes flashed across her mind but she was jarred back to her present reality by the pelting of stones.
She was tied up in the Wretched Forest. Her arms and feet were tied around either side of the trunk of a massive tree with rope. She was splayed helplessly like a sacrifice. The pelting started again. That was when she realized small nettles were falling from the tree hitting her regularly. She peered out into the distance before her but the now rising sun blinded her. She made out only the ill-shaped figure of a man with two fist size rocks in his hand.
The word, "Scunta" barely escaped her lips before the first rock hit her to the side of her head.
Blood from the wound ran down her face and into her right eye. The figure ran towards her with the second rock high in the air ready to come down hard. She was sure she was going to die. She started to shake violently and as the rock was about to hit, she saw a sinister smile on the face of her childhood terror. Everything went blank until she opened her eyes again.
"That's enough. Wake up, Woman." Her not so naked saviour from before seems to have saved her again.
Her eyes grew wide as she looked into his green eyes framed by dark skin. She had never seen a human so beautiful. He took her reaction for alarm. After all, he did earlier attack her as animals and shape shift before her eyes.
"Don't worry, I don't bite," He said. He smiled a little to reassure Dari but it wasn't necessary. Dari was not particularly scared. Being on her own, journeying from halfway across the world has introduced her to many wonders. And aside from the fear that she would fail her mission, she was afraid of very little else.
She suddenly felt parched and reached for water bottle near her left hip only to feel bare skin. She was wearing a long old shirt a few sizes too large and her bare legs stood out in contrast to the dark coloured material in the semi dark room.
She gasped, "You took my clothes."
He responded, "I had to. When I realized your water was from the Wretched Forest, no doubt near some incanta trees, I had to remove your clothes to allow the poisons to leave your skin faster. Your heavy clothes would have trapped them inside you longer."
"Wait," Dari interrupted. "Poison?"
"Yes. The water by incanta trees usually feed the trees but the trees often give something back, poisons. Well, the substance that is emitted from it's root to the water is only poisonous to animals. The surrounding flora thrives from it, which explains why incanta trees are always in the midst of rich foliage."
"Oh." Dari was thinking back on her journey through the forest and realized must to be right. Water body she encountered, river, spring, pond, always had the same strange tree amidst a bounty of flora but she met almost no animals whole navigating the forest.
He continued, "The poison in the water makes it extra clear which attracts regular animals and passer-by humans alike. When it gets into the body, it lulls the body into a sleep. This makes it easier to be taken by predators who lurk near these trees."
"Are you one of those predators?" Dari asked out loud before she thought about it.
He stopped talking abruptly. He looked at her directly to search her face.
"Is she still afraid of me?" he wondered.
Dari smiled at his pensiveness, "Never mind. What do I call my three-times-over saviour?
"My name is Therion, a shape shifter, and like you the last of my kind."
"Like me?"
"Yes, you're a dream walker. A careless one, but definitely a dream walker.
"What's a dream walker."
"You must be joking. You don't know what a dream walker is? I don't believe this."
"Just answer the question kitty."
"My name is Therion! Anyway, dream walkers are a race believed extinct. They were beings with the ability to influence a person's mind and decisions though their dreams. They could walk from one person's dream to the next and manipulate what happens in the dream. Many dream walkers took political positions while others considered their gift a curse and hid away in little villages or even as far as mountains. They had to hide because persons with political ambition often sought them for their aid and killed them if they refused. Unfortunately for the dream walkers, their fame spread to a being from the shadows who through mere accident, realized that they could use the dream walkers to empower themselves. They were called the zamons and later, they became known as dream chasers. Like dream walkers, they could enter a person's dream but they sought no advantage from the dreamer but their death. Their mission was always to kill the dreamer. The thing is, dream chasers were sub-beings. They didn't really exist outside the subconsciousness of people's fears. They emerge only through dreams to kill. After they kill a hundred regular humans, they may take over the conscious mind and body of their last victim. This resulted in many deaths which only slowed when people realized they could avoid a dream chaser's attack by placing water at home entrances such as windows or doors. Dream chasers can never pass an open body of water no matter how small. Once though, ten dream walkers asleep in a forest on their way to the mountains were killed by a dream chaser. He took over the body of the final victim, a pregnant woman. That's when dream chasers realized that killing one dream walker was the same as killing ten ordinary humans. This put the dream walkers at great risk since most humans were protected at night by water around their homes. That's how all the dream walkers were eventually killed."
"Soooo...the dream chaser who attacked me in the wretched knew I was a dream walker?"
"Wait...you were attacker? Did you kill it"
"No. I was busy trying to keep it from killing me."
"This is not good. If one dream chaser knows a dream walker exists, all the dream chasers will come after you."
"How did he know I was a dream walker anyway?"
"The same way I did. Once a being turns twelve, it's true nature becomes clear to all supernatural beings."
As they spoke, Dari had settled back into Therion's version of a bed. She had several questions she wanted to ask him since he seemed to know everything, and she'd been journeying practically blind all this time but she was getting tired.
She asked as she made herself more comfortable in his shirt, "Why are you so worried about me anyway? We just met."
Therion didn't turn to look at her as he answered. He was looking at the images on the cave walls that appeared and disappeared at the whim of the light from the fire.
He spoke in a far off manner, "But I do know you. You are written about here in the prophecy told by the paintings on these walls."
"Prophecy," Dari whispered as of in a trance.
"Yes. The prophecy shows that a single girl dream walker will appear when all hope is lost. Dream chasers will hunt her ferociously. But nature will protect her. This makes sense because these dream chasers are completely unnatural. It goes on to show the rise of the zamon king from the floor of the deepest sea after the sea has receded all the way back. Only a dream walker can stop that from happening. And unfortunately for you, you are the only one left."
Therion turned around at the sound of snoring. He looked at her with pity. She was kind of cute when she slept. He shape shifted back into the ferocious felines and slept guarding the entrance of the cave doorway on either side of a pool of clear water.