Darkness. That is what most people see when they close their eyes in the night. Even fewer can remember their dreams. Rarer still, is the ability to control dreams, but there is one more kind of dreamer that is so rare, few know about it. They call themselves dreamscapers, the ones who can travel, meet, and interact with each other and dream creatures in a whole other world that most think is just a subconscious image conjured up by our brains. To let the world know about this grand other world, the story shall be told of two fatefully linked dreamscapers and the way that they fought to bring peace to that other little-known world so closely connected to ours.

Running through a silent meadow of bright green, tirelessly and endlessly in great floating bounds, Raven was thoroughly enjoying herself. As she bounded along, she saw a dark figure in the center of the meadow, and halted. It beckoned to her, calling as attractively as a siren’s song is to sailors. Carelessly, Raven delightfully skipped over to the figure out of Raven’s typical happy-go-lucky curiosity. Suddenly, burning red eyes and a grotesque eerie smile met her, along with hundreds of shadowy hands reaching out to snatch her. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, Raven managed to avoid the snatch of the first bunch of hands coming at her, but alas, her adrenaline burst wasn’t enough to get her past the second. With a muffled scream, she was suffocated and dragged down into darkness by the black hands.

When she awoke, Raven still found herself in darkness, but with one shimmering light shining down on her. Suddenly, she heard frantic footsteps and the puff of breath coming from within the darkness. A boy with silver hair soon darted into view with more dark, red-eyed creatures following him. He was running for the light that she currently was within. Raven, watching the boy was hoping he’d make it to the light to join her in time, for she was wanting somebody else to comfort her and tell her what was going on in that strange place. Her heart jumped with worry when he tripped and injured himself. Only moments later, the boy was within inches of the light, but yet she could only sit and gaze in horror as the dark creatures pounced and consumed the boy in their dark clutches. Not even a scream of shock could come out of her frozen jaws.

The light quickly grew brighter around Raven, and when it died down, she found herself in another area. There was still a dim glow around her. Soon enough, her light wasn’t the only light in the area. Fires starting blazing up one by one. Soon, unusually shaped figures starting appearing as silhouettes against the flames. Raven kept watching, and then noticed that some of the flame patches way up in the air were moving in unison by themselves. That’s when she realized that those were no ordinary flames, but they were the flames of a huge winged beast with a strange blazing “L” and “666” emblazoned upon its arm. Her eyes shot to a scintillating figure that appeared out of the corner of her eye. The figure quickly darted up to the beast’s head, and for a brief moment was suspended before slashed it in the head with a crimson blade. In his moment of suspension, Raven noticed that the shining figure was a man in armor with black, white, and red hair.

The beast reeled back in agony at its torn face, but quickly regained its solid stance. As the armored man was floating down, the beast quickly snatched him up in its claws and bellowed with fury. The man flailed about in the beast’s grasp, for a brief moment until it harshly threw him down to the ground. Raven could see him try to sit up, but instead rolled over and closed his eyes. Whether the man was unconscious or dead, that was uncertain to her, but she soon noticed the light was fading around her. The beast suddenly snapped his fiery gaze towards her, and suddenly smaller creatures all around him started bounding towards Raven.

After a while of a bad case of lock-jawed silence, Raven finally managed to squeak out to herself, “What is going on!?” and again, burst out running for fear of her life. Pretty soon she found herself with a group of other random people running for their lives. They crossed over a bridge, and a girl in a dress tumbled over. A look of agonizing fear was the last look on her face before a pale-faced, long-armed creature reached out, grabbed her, and turned her to ash. At that dreadful sight, Raven and the group of people burst into the fastest sprint any of them would even dare think of ever doing. Finally, they all corralled into a house that looked like a mix between Raven’s house, her friend’s house, and her grandma’s house. The group split into pairs and trios. Raven went with another girl, and they found themselves in a dead-end store room. The footsteps of the eerie ash creatures were pounding in the hallway, so the girls quickly dove into some stored items to silently hide themselves from the horrors that waited right outside their door.

As soon as the screaming of the unfortunate souls who couldn’t find a hiding place ceased, and the house was deemed safe enough to emerge, those who were left came out of their hiding places and gathered on an air mattress in the house’s computer room. They all huddled together hoping, praying, that the creatures wouldn’t come back…but they were dead wrong. A sudden flash of lightning revealed within the shadows, the grotesque long-armed ash creatures lunging towards all of them on the mattress. One of them was lunging straight for Raven and…SNAP!