"Kev," Liza said, placing a hand on my shoulder as we sat up together on the first floor of the eerie palace, across from the winding staircase. "I'm glad to see you here."
Likewise," I said, meaning it. To see Liza and her pretty blonde hair against the off-looking blue hue of the walls brought light into my discomforting dreams. I don't think I was alone in experiencing our common nightmare as mundane nowadays. You can only have the same dream many times before it becomes exceedingly average.
Liza smiled at me, showing no sign of distress. "Are you going to the crop harvest in Bloomfield?"
"I don't know ... I might."
"Well, I'm going. You should come." She reached for her braid and began to undo it. I considered her for a moment, curious.
"Why are you getting rid of the braid?"
"I want to see if it translates into the real world when we wake up." She pursed her lips. "I know this is the dream version of this shitty castle; when we're sent here while awake, its impact on our physical bodies once we're returned to Earth can be devastating."
That was true. We still had the eyeball marks on our limbs to prove it.
Braid out, she fluffed her free, long hair and flipped it behind her shoulders. "I wonder when the evil man will show."
"Who knows? Sometimes it's here as soon as we arrive; other times, it waits a few minutes. Remember a few nights ago: he waited an hour before making an appearance." I stood, my balance hinging on my unmarked left leg. "Are you scared of it? Because my fear is starting to fade ..."
My voice trailed off when I turned around to face the steel gate; it was further back this time, deep within a lamplit hallway that hadn't appeared until now. I nudged Liza's shoulder, and she got up too, her eyes following my gaze down the elongated pathway.
While the gate was still there, we saw two people in front of its bars. One was a bald Black man in light-colored clothes. The other was an average-sized woman face-down, wearing long blue sleeves, pants, and a matching hijab.
"Who are they?" Liza paled at them, black eyes going wide.
"I don't know."
I walked toward them. Suddenly, the Black man sat up in a panic. Before he noticed Liza and me, he turned to the woman in the hijab and shook her by the shoulder. She made a groaning sound, then slowly rose off her front side onto her knees.
Liza and I gasped when we saw her light brown skin marked with the same reddish-purple eyeball constellation that decorated my right leg and Liza's left arm.
But that constellation was on this woman's round face.
"Leo," she said, turning to the tall, muscular man beside her. When she next spoke, I could understand what she was saying, yet the movements of her lips didn't match the sound entering my ears. "We're back ag—"
She cut herself short, soft eyes landing on us. Leo looked our way too and raised his black eyebrows in surprise. Unlike the woman, however, he didn't seem scared.
"We are not the only ones, then." His low voice suited him; so did the smile creeping onto his full lips. While his eyes were on the smaller side, they struck me as more than capable of seeing the world and even perceiving details that an idiot like me might miss.
"What are your names?" he asked, standing up.
It was then that I spotted the eyeball constellation on his right arm. I raised my eyebrows and pointed at Liza's left arm. "The two of you match!"
Liza nodded, intrigued. The woman in the hijab gradually relaxed and eventually got onto her feet as Leo had. We four met in the middle of the relatively bright hallway, getting an up-close look at each other and introducing ourselves:
"I'm Samira Hafidi."
"Leo Garnier."
"Liza Howe."
"Kev Martinez."
Four minutes of questioning each other went by. We all felt eager to know the other humans we were wrapped up in this nightmare with. We were in our early to mid-twenties, living either in the United States or in France—although Leo and Samira explained that they had to flee France recently to avoid being falsely accused of the murder of their mutual friend Noelle. They described the gory scene they had woken up to after they were first spirited away; Liza and I shared our story from a couple of years ago when we experienced a similar ordeal after taking our final exam. The "runes" our new friends found on Noelle reminded me of the runes that Apex woman drew before killing my coworkers.
"The Apex, you call them." Samira gave Liza a long, serious look. "Do you think one of those monsters could have killed our friend?"
Liza nodded, her arms crossed nervously. "They're dangerous and can show up at random. It won't surprise me if that's what got Noelle."
Tears streamed down Samira's face. Leo placed a large hand on her shoulder, saying, "I'm sorry," to his companion.
I looked at Liza to see if she was crying too, but her eyes were dry. Instead, she wore an expression similar to the determined face she had on while saving my life out in the storm. "There's a way for us to fight them. I fought one of these monsters off to save my little brother."
"How?" Samira asked, drying her eyes with her shirt's long sleeve. "I must know. Leo and I have come into a bit of danger while fleeing France. We're safe in Portugal, but death seems to follow us."
Leo said soberly, "We have had hotel staff go missing wherever we stay; we feel like we burden everyone around us because we attract killers." He gestured his free hand loosely at Liza. "And now you say these killers are called Apex, and the evil man told you this?"
"Yes, although he didn't say much."
"The two of you aren't at fault," I assured them. Honestly, I was trying to assure myself of the same thing. If I was what attracted that Apex woman to the field, then I could easily submit to the guilt of being the one at fault for their deaths. But what good would come from me feeling guilty? Nothing. Leanna was still dead.
Then a clanking sound came from the gate. We turned toward it, startled, and were surprised to find a small woman in brightly colored clothes—easily shorter and frailer than Liza or Samira—gripping the black steel.
"Hey!" She shouted at us. Her lips matched her speech, leading me to believe she was speaking English and her words weren't simply being translated by the dream for me to comprehend. "Can any of you let me out? I don't like being in the dark." She gestured back at the darkness behind her.
"What's your name?" I asked her, walking toward the gate with the others close behind me. Glancing down, I spotted the eye marks on her left leg. I raised my eyebrows, saying, "We're matching. You have one leg, I have the other."
Samira said nervously, "All of us add up to be one body."
"Except you're just the head," Leo pointed out, stepping up to the gate with me. We started to grapple with the strangely slick steel, hoping to get it open. "We're missing a torso."
"Torso aside," I said, "we need to ask that evil man 'why.'"
There was a deadbolt on the gate. Leo grabbed it with his marked right arm; the eyeballs began to glow in their two-dimensional fashion. Suddenly the deadbolt clicked open and Leo took the lock off. Nadine rushed in, giving me a quick hug before bolting to stand between all of us. Giving everyone a serious look, she said in a tone of voice that would normally have registered in my head as being bratty, "Are you all real people too? Because I've only been here with one other real person before, and he's not here right now."
Liza and Samira shared a look before their eyes returned to Nadine. "Does this human," Samira said, "have similar marks on his chest?"
Nadine blinked in surprise at the question, then nodded. "All over."
We all seemed to reach the same conclusion in a matter of minutes: we were missing the final piece of our magic tattoo puzzle. Introductions and descriptions of where we last were on Earth followed.
"I'm off the coast of Portugal," Nadine explained. "My dad runs a mechanic ship."
"Are you serious?" Leo grinned at the news. "Samira and I got to Portugal a little while ago. Maybe tomorrow, we can meet? We're closest to Praia da Apúlia."
An eerie echoing scream came from the obsidian hallway.