closed ◉ man me a sand

[sumptus]

WHO: Caius Porthmeus, Cedric Carsus
WHAT: Caius goes spelunking in a few people's dreams
WHEN: Idk how time works
WHERE: The Fade
NOTES: CW: surrealist gore likely. This is a catch-all for dream threads. Please feel free to drop in my dream sign-up post if you'd like a dream thread sometimes in the future. (No promises about when, tho, I try to limit the number of log threads I'm in at any given time to keep from being unbearably slow.)

Comments

[sumptus]

It's not so simple as running back through a door. Doors close, lock. Two boys run into the dark, and Caius can make dark a thing they can run into, inky black nothing rolling out like a carpet beneath their feet, the pinprick light of somewhere else flickering into being at the tunnel's end — but he isn't the only one with power here.

Teeth gnash into the shadows behind them and come up dripping, ripping free gobs of black that overflow from greying gums. Spindly fingers stretch and lengthen after their heels. Nails break, scramble, pull, and the light begins to spiral impossibly, helplessly farther until—

Gravity tilts. Tunnel begins to slant and pitch into well. And that circle of light they're running toward isn't moving farther away anymore — it's contracting. Shrinking. They won't make it.

"You can make it," says the boy, because belief is real as breathing here, but you, because Caius isn't here to save anyone from their nightmares. He's here to understand. Verify. Test.

A heel skids on invisible gravel. Caius goes down, ragged sleeve slipping out of the other boy's grasp. Falling. But Cedric can make it.

[dissolving]

Shadow snatches, path becomes pit, and the tall boy rockets down. Stupid, the eye Cedric turns to light; watching their exit vanish. You can make it.

Stupid, because that was never a question. Not really. Momentum carries him a pounding step past, only to sprawl sudden for the turn. Cedric scrambles on all fours, hands dug into the icy dark to grip him, towing Caius from tar.

"We can," He won't. "Be right behind you."

He won't be behind Caius. Belief is real here, and Cedric never makes it out of this dream. The thing that isn't his mother unfurls its jaw to the chest. There's no sword to reach for, no shield but his body to plant between them; a mirror to the bed. He lifts his fists, shoves an elbow back at the child behind. Urges: Go.

It isn't his mother. It would be nice if it was less of her. Recognition trails sunken cheeks, flyblown skin. The demon reaches one overstretched palm. His hands jerk, uncurl,

Reach back.

Teeth snap over wrist. In one wet crunch the demon twists up, swallows elbow to arm. Chews. Cedric claws the air, and when he screams, that fucking hum rises to meet it. Shoulder, now. Bone pulps, tendon tears; low and guttural and thick with saliva.

It doesn't last very long. It never does.