^ Sherlock's "Redbeard". I wrote this chapter to this soundtrack.

Dreamweaver - Chapter 15

"Run," Siegbert snarled, giving Forrest a hard shove in the back. The two boys broke into a dash, hurrying back the way they'd come and twisting through the stacks of corpses spanning from one horizon to the other. Leo's voice rang out behind them, clear and cold:

"Where are you two going? Do you truly mean to run from me? When I am offering you death at Anankos's mighty table?"

"Ignore him!" Siegbert hissed as he scrambled after Forrest. He couldn't tell how far ahead of Leo they were, but it couldn't have been much — their feet kept slipping in streams of blood, and their knees, weak from the death, Leo's words, Anankos's looming presence, or some mixture of all three, threatened to dump them down onto the red soil.

"Give up!" Leo's voice rang out again, startlingly close — the stacks warped his voice, giving Siegbert the horrible feeling that his deranged uncle was right behind them. "Give up and surrender your soul to Anankos! We can all die together!"

"Brynhildr!" Forrest shouted, losing his good sense. "Brynhildr! Where are you?" He waited, but the tome dragon did not reply — the storm clouds had moved above their heads, the thunder and wind blocking out any reply their friend may have given.

Scaling a small hill, Forrest screeched to a halt in a splash of blood; a second later Siegbert thumped into his back. "What is it?" his cousin gasped.

Forrest, white as a sheet, merely pointed, and Siegbert's face lost its color soon after — there, only a mile or so in the distance, was the deathstroke spell, washing down in a bubbling wave over the hills of dead. It broke down the mounds of corpses like the strongest corrosive, dissolving them into first skeletons, then a peaty, chunky sea of blood and bone marrow the color of vomit, which disappeared beneath the black waves as they slowly moved towards Forrest and Siegbert.

"Go back," Siegbert said, twisting around.

"But—"

"Don't argue!"

They'd barely circled around a stack of Hoshidan Onymoji when Leo appeared, seemingly out of thin air, his smile cold and red. Without preamble, he slashed his blade at Siegbert's neck, so fast that Siegbert almost didn't see it. He jerked back, but it was too late: the side of his neck split open, releasing a stream of blood that flowed down his throat. He tumbled back into Forrest, sending the both of them down into the blood-stained soil.

"Siegbert!" Forrest screamed.

"I'm...I'm okay!" he said, fighting his way to his feet. "Back! Now!"

They again switched directions, stumbling back towards the horizon being dissolved by black magic. Siegbert gasped as he ran, his neck burning like hellfire. It seemed that his uncle had missed any major artery — Siegbert pressed his hand against the wound, hissing as he thought, It's just a dream. You aren't really hurt. He slashed at you, but he didn't hit you, because he can't. He isn't real.

But the stinging pain in his neck didn't ebb, as he expected it to — if anything, it grew worse, making him snarl in pain.

It wasn't long before they were forced to stop again — a sea of blackness spanned before them just down the hill, allowing them to go no further. Forrest glanced at his cousin desperately, panic constricting his lungs. "What now?" he cried. A trickle of blood leaked between Siegbert's fingers, and Forrest said, "Siegbert? Are you okay?"

Siegbert slowly lowered his hand from his neck, revealing an ugly red slash on the side of his throat that colored his skin down to his collarbones red. "Gods!" Forrest cried, rushing to his side. "Are you—"

Leo appeared behind them, his sword arm a blur — Siegbert slammed his shoulder into Forrest, thrusting him out of the way, and the tip of the sword struck Siegbert's shoulder, ripping a swath through his sleeve and across his shoulder blades. With a scream of pain, Siegbert tumbled to the ground, and Forrest flopped onto his stomach.

"Siegbert!" Forrest shrieked, crawling towards his cousin. The rip in Siegbert's shirt was already welling with blood, and it seeped down his shoulder blades, coloring his backside burgundy. One look at the wound was enough to tell Forrest that it was serious. But as Leo took a threatening step forward, blade dripping with red, he knew that he would not be able to do anything about it.

"Pathetic," he said, lip curling derisively. "I would have thought that Xander taught you two better."

Siegbert struggled to focus — the pain in his back and arm was intense, so much that he could barely move his fingers. "Run," he managed in a strangled voice.

"Run?" Leo laughed. "Run where? To my blade? Or to the sea of death at your backs?"

Forrest quivered, dread numbing his body from one end to the other. This evil creature that was supposed to be his father was right — between his cruel blade and the deathstroke spell, there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Death literally surrounded them on all sides, and the one person that may have been able to help them was far out of reach, blocked by the thunderheads roiling above them.

"Now you see your situation," Leo said, spinning his blade about his wrist again. "Give up and die for the glory of Anankos."

Groggy with pain, Siegbert searched desperately for a weapon; he spotted a katana sticking out of the head of a Nohrian bow knight several yards away. Leo followed his gaze and smiled.

"Go for it," he said. "If you think you can make it."

Siegbert knew full well that he had no chance of making it — his uncle would cut him to pieces before he even reached the hilt, if his earlier speed was any indication. He glanced over his shoulder and watched as the deathstroke spell ate through another pile of corpses, sloshing ever closer, and then looked back at Leo's contemptuous smile.

Gods! I guess I don't have a choice!

"Go!" he roared, shoving Forrest sideways, away from him. The young noble tumbled over the shaft of a poleaxe and down into a puddle of blood, but fortunately for him, Leo wasn't turned his way: the Dark Knight was swinging his weapon towards Siegbert, who sprang in the opposite direction. The blade tagged Siegbert's shoulder, slashing open his other sleeve — Siegbert screeched but didn't stop, yanking up the katana and then stumbling wildly through the narrow, red path between two mounds of bodies. Leo paused, wiping the sword clean on the tunic of a dead mercenary. He smiled over his shoulder at Forrest and then went after Siegbert.

That was all Forrest saw before he was running through the piles of dead.

He didn't think he'd ever run so fast, in such a panicked fervor, in his life. Dread gave him strength, powering legs that were nearly dead with exhaustion, sending him whipping through the walls of bodies that surrounded him like a bloody labyrinth. He shouted Brynhildr's name as he ran, desperately hoping that she could hear him, but she did not reply to his cries—his own voiced echoed back to him from across the eerily silent battlefield, scarily similar to as it had back in the empty Castle Krakenburg.

He knew the plan, what Siegbert wanted: run in opposite directions, outmaneuver Leo and get behind him, then meet at the center and run some more, until the somehow managed to outrun the predatory facsimile of Forrest's father. But even as he ran, making a wide circle through the battlefield, climbing over chariots, tripping over naginatas, splashing through streams and puddles of red, all the while looking over his shoulder and hoping, praying, that Leo had not caught up to Siegbert, that he would descry a head of dirty blond hair between one of the bloody hills, he despaired. He despaired at the memory of his father's cold smile, the pain that had made Siegbert's face pinch, made his body hunch and his wounds run with red. He feared that Siegbert would stumble, would collapse from blood loss, would tip from the edge of consciousness and then death as Leo caught up and struck with a blade already dripping with Siegbert's blood. Tears stung his eyes at the thought that his cousin sacrificed himself for Forrest, for the second time, and this time, forevermore.

Hang on, Siegbert! The prayer burned in him like a fire, making his temples ache. Gods, please don't let Father have caught up with him! Let him be okay! Please! Please—

A cry of pain cut through the growing thunder, and the inside of Forrest's chest went cold.

No.

He swerved, dashing towards the agonized cry from where it had echoed up from one of the nearby stacks of bodies. He scrambled down around a dead kinshi and hit a slope, slamming down on a hill of scratchy pebbles and skidding down to the foot of the incline. A sharp rock slashed into his calf, but he barely stopped to register the pain — he leapt to his feet and swerved around another small hill, just in time to see Leo plunge his blade into Siegbert's chest.

"NO!" The scream ripped from his throat was louder than thunder, high enough to shatter glass, but it was too late, and it did not stop his father, that monster that was supposed to be his father — the blade ran his cousin through like a pike, and Leo's strength bore Siegbert down into the mud. The world spun, distorted, warped into focus and ruin as Forrest watched his cousin take in a pained, shuddering breath and then lie still. Leo's sword exited his chest in a spray of blood.

Reason abandoned Forrest — he ran to his cousin, dropping to his knees beside him. Siegbert's still face, his dark eyes, his bloody lips shattered something inside Forrest — he screamed, screamed and screamed, screamed because the Gods were cruel, because Siegbert was courageous, courageous and selfless, and he'd died twice now, protecting Forrest, and Forrest, wretched and weak and pathetic as he was, hadn't been able to stop it either time, and now Siegbert was gone forever. Before they'd been able to escape the dreamweave. Before Forrest had been able to tell his cousin how much he'd loved him.

Leo let him cry — cruelly, he stood by, watching with his bloody smile as Forrest curled up against Siegbert's chest and despaired. He did not speak until Forrest's screams had faded to raspy whimpers, till his eyes ached to cry, but could offer no more tears. Only then did he step forward, blade whistling as it spun around his wrist.

"Are you ready to surrender your soul to Anankos?" he asked.

Forrest's soul, whatever was left of it, was cold and dead, perfect fodder for the Silent Dragon and all his savagery. A small, dull part of Forrest knew that when Leo brought down his blade, his father would not sever his head, that his soul would not go to Anankos — his heart would stop and he would simply die, and for a fleeting second, that's what he wanted: to die, to die like Siegbert, because without Siegbert, there was no point in resisting Leo. No point in escaping the dreamweave. The point had been to leave together. And that was gone now. So none of it mattered. None of it mattered and Forrest just wanted to die like his cousin.

"No resistance?" Leo's voice was poisonous. "Excellent. Exactly what I expected of you, Forrest."

Forrest's fingers, soaked in Siegbert's blood, clenched, digging down into his cousin's shirt. He wanted to be angry, wanted to be defiant, but what was the point of resisting? He closed his eyes and took Siegbert's hand — his cousin's fingers had not yet stiffened, and were warm enough to make him think that he was still alive. Just this part of him. Just kill me, Father. Make it quick, please.

"Though, truly, it would have been more entertaining to see you fight and struggle. I do so enjoy laying fools low."

There it was again: that flash of rage that overcame his helplessness, his defeat, filling his head with a furious red fog. Fight, that tiny part of him shrieked. Stand up and fight!

No, he thought tiredly. I'll die.

You're going to die anyway, that defiant kernel said. So make it for something! Fight for Siegbert! Fight and die for him!

Leo suddenly grabbed Forrest from behind, twisting his finger deep into his hair. Forrest shrieked in pain as his father yanked him to his feet, tearing his hand out of Siegbert's, forcing him to turn and stand before him. To see the cruelty and darkness in his one eye.

"How pitiful," he said, seeing the smears of grief on Forrest's face. "Your cousin dies, and you just give up, is that it? Condemn yourself to die, and damn what Siegbert would want for you?" He cackled. "Your incompetence knows no bounds. You shame your country with your cowardice."

Pain made Forrest's chest heavy. He wanted to fight. A small part of him had come back to life at the sight of the bloody savage before him, the bloody savage with the bloody blade, wanting to, needing to, survive, endure. But not enough of him. Siegbert's face still filled his head, dead forever, and that part of him, still heavy with anguish, just wanted to give in, let the cards fall where they may, and join his cousin, wherever he was. That part of him knew that there was no point in anything else.

Even if it meant the witches would win. Even if it meant dying at the hands of someone who wasn't real, in a place outside of reality. He closed his eyes.

Leo saw his defeat, utter and complete. "So be it." He raised his sword. "Die, Forrest, like the slime you are."

Light glinted off of Leo's blade as it swept towards Forrest's neck, and suddenly, a thunderous voice crashed down from the sky.

"FORREST? FORREST!"

Forrest's eyes flashed open. Brynhildr! Time seemed to slow down as Leo's blade reached his neck. But seconds before it connected, it became translucent and sheer, and passed through his throat in a wisp of cold air.

"What?" Leo's voice was high was disbelief — they both stared at his blade, which had become as transparent as a pane of glass. The affect seemed to spread up the blade, consuming the hilt and reaching Leo's fingers, which, in turn, became glassy and white, defracting the light from the stormy sky. Leo's grip on Forrest's hair loosened, and he stumbled backwards, flabbergasted. "What in the god's name?"

"FORREST!" Brynhildr shrieked. "FORREST, LISTEN TO ME! THERE IS A SHROUD OF DEATHSTROKE MAGIC SURROUNDING YOU! A SHROUD OF DEATH AND LIES! BE CAREFUL! SOMEHOW, THE WITCHES ARE TRYING TO TRICK YOU!"

Forrest was dizzy with shock, and Bryndhildr's words rattled him to the core, rattled something loose that he thought never to feel again: hope. Lies. I'm surrounded by death and lies. Death and lies. Death and lies. Leo. Death. Lies... For some reason, like a deep, bubbling instinct, his eyes went over his shoulder, to the still, stiff corpse of Siegbert lying in the bloody mud. Lies. Lies. Siegbert. Lies.

Is Siegbert still alive?

Now, he didn't know — the doubt, it made that tiny kindle of hope burn, burn like a sun inside him. Is Siegbert still alive? The answer wasn't yes, not now, not for sure, but the answer also wasn't no, not now, not for sure. And that was all that mattered. Lies. Death and lies. Siegbert's corpse... The witches are trying to trick you! Trick him with the death of a boy he loved?

As he turned back to his father, he felt as though he was standing at a crossroads, with choices leading in two directions: one where he could cower and run from a beast he knew he had no hope of outrunning, and one where he could leap at Leo and fight. Fight for his life and Siegbert's. Fight a battle that he knew he had little chance of winning. A battle he had to fight, because maybe now, now that he knew that he was surrounded by death and lies, maybe, just maybe, Siegbert was still alive. And even if he wasn't, he had to live, live until he could know for sure.

Brynhildr's voice came down from above again: "FORREST, JUST HANG ON A LITTLE LONGER! I'M ALMOST THERE! HOLD ON! JUST HANG ON!"

"SILENCE!" Leo's shriek rivaled Anankos's — with an angry slash at the sky, he coalesced the clouds into storm banks again, roiling black masses flashing with lightning and thunder that blocked the tome dragon's voice.

As the wind swept down from above, blasting Forrest's hair away from his face, he summoned every scrap of bravery he could muster, and sprang at his father, catching him in a full-body tackle. With a surprised grunt, Leo crumpled beneath him, dropping hard onto the red soil. Forrest took a moment to recover and then immediately dove for Leo's weapon, grabbing clumsily for the hilt of the sword and wresting it from his father's hand. But he was suddenly thrown backwards as Leo slammed an armored gauntlet into his gut.

White lights blasted Forrest's vision, and the world dissolved into a garbled mess of color and pain. When he regained his senses, he was lying on his belly three yards away, wheezing heavily as he tried to gasp air back into flattened lungs. His double vision faded enough to see his father stalking towards him, knees bent and shoulders hunched like an angry black wolf.

Forrest fought his way to his feet and lifted his father's sword with both hands. "S-stay back," he gasped, his words weaker than his legs. Leo took a threatening step forward, and he shrieked, "D-don't come any closer, Father! I'll...I'll kill you! I will!"

The blatant hatred in Leo's good eye was intense enough to make Forrest want to crawl away and hide. "No, son," he hissed, voice more venomous than black magic. "I don't think you will."

The Dark Knight darted forward, grabbing at Forrest with a hand that nearly blurred with speed. Forrest swiped with the sword and tagged Leo's wrist, but the blade clattered harmlessly off of his father's bloody gauntlet, unbalancing him as it bounced back. Leo slashed in again, hard — Forrest staggered to the left, and his father's arm blasted past, as powerful and fast as a ballistae bolt, and, panicked, he swung the sword up at his father's head, desperate to get in an incapacitating blow. But something stopped the swing — his father's shoulder pauldron. Leo grabbed the blade with an armored hand before it could bounce back, and used the other to strike Forrest hard in the gut.

Forrest felt as though he'd been impaled by a blunt spear. A horrendous pain erupted from his lower belly, stealing his ability to control his legs, and he collapsed to his side, dropping the sword and choking up a stream of spittle and stomach acid. He wheezed, desperately, as Leo picked up the sword, planted a boot to his chest and then, with a triumphant smile, drove the sword down into Forrest's chest.

The pain was like nothing Forrest had ever experienced, in or outside of reality. Annihilation burned through him, blazing across every follicle of his being, a compounded chain reaction of ice, fire, and destruction. He might have screamed, and he might have simply gargled nonsensically, but a blast of white light soon stole away his sense of time, space, and self. It filled his vision, swirling and twisting like the pain, and suddenly, he was there, and he wasn't — he felt the pain, felt the sword in his chest, ripping through his flesh, his muscle, his organs, felt his father's boot on his stomach, anchoring him in place. But he also felt the soft blanket beneath his arms, Siegbert's bony chest beneath his head. He could see Leo's bloody face, the stormy sky, see the mountains of corpses, but he could also see the ceiling of a dark room — Siegbert's room — see the shadows coalescing in the stony corners, see the veiled faces of witches looking apprehensible in the corner.

I'm waking up. Some small part of him knew this truth. And that same part of him knew that he was going to die. It's over. I lost. It's over...

He saw the black cloud crouched above him, crackling with black magic, ready to devour him. The deathstroke spell. He felt tendrils of the black magic begin to wind down towards him, brushing against his cheeks, his hands, deceptively soft and gentle. But the numbness that seized him was not — it was disgusting and cold, paralyzing his flesh, arresting the function of his organs.

No! I'm dreaming! I'm still sleeping! I'm with father! He's hurting me. Forrest's thoughts were chaotic and panicked, and he struggled to concentrate, focusing on the scent of death, the sight of mountains of bodies. Of the agony blazing through his body, of Leo's sword in his chest, anchored between his ribs, dangerously close to his heart. He's down there in the dreamweave, on a battlefield of death, trying to kill me. Let me go back! Let me go back! Let me...

The air seemed to grow heavy, pulling him downward, back into the sleeping magic. But before he could sink back into the dreamweave completely, he noticed something, something that shocked him so much that he nearly woke up fully: Siegbert's chest, on the bed beneath him, was moving. It was warm, soft, his breaths deep and steady.

He remembered Siegbert's corpse, bloody and still, remembered Brynhildr's words: Death and lies! The witches are trying to trick you!

His fear, his helplessness, his grief, his loss...it vanished, banished like shadows in the face of the sun. Siegbert is still alive. It's not over.

And then he was back, eyes fluttering open to a red, oppressive sky. Forrest sucked in a deep breath and sat up — his father was a few yards away, his blade soaked with blood. He spun around in astonishment when Forrest rose to his feet.

"What devilry is this?" His good eye was wide with amazement. "This can't be...you're dead. You were dead, you slime! How are you not hurt?"

Forrest looked down at himself and saw that though his shirt was torn and soaked with blood, he was unwounded and fully functional. How...?

It didn't matter. None of that did. He glanced behind him, to the body his father had slain seconds earlier. The body that was bloody, still, and stiff. He smiled.

Lies.

Whatever he'd seen earlier, when his father had supposedly slain his cousin...Forrest now knew that it was a figment of the dreamweave, something engineered to make him lose his resolve, his hope. That had been the witches' plot, the witches' mistake, and it had almost worked. Now, it gave him great hope. Such hope. It filled him like a fire, chasing away the fear, the despair.

"He's alive," Forrest said, staring down at Siegbert's body.

Leo laughed, a twisted, cruel sound. "Siegbert?" he said. "Alive? Have you lost your wits, boy?"

"Say what you want." Forrest's voice was steady as he turned to his father. "But I know he's alive. That body down there's not real. Just as you aren't, Father."

Leo's sadistic smile thinned, revealing the vile temper underneath. "You really are mad. Here." He sprang forward. "Let me put you out of your misery!"

Forrest didn't move as he swung his blade, and it passed through him like a ghost.

"What...?" Leo slashed at Forrest again, this time at his neck, and again the blade aired through him. "NO!" The Dark Knight let out a shriek of rage and launched into a series of devastating strikes, each one delivered at a nearly incomprehensible speed. But each was about as effective as the last, passing seamlessly through Forrest's body. "NO!" his father screamed again. "Why isn't it...why can't I hurt you? Damn you! Damn you! Why can't I kill you? You show an ounce of bravery, and now I can't harm you?"

And then it hit Forrest like an arrow: the answer to all of his problems. Of course...of course. It was so simple. So deceptively, stunningly simple. So simple that he threw his head back and laughed. He laughed so hard that Leo actually paused, staring at him as though he'd gone mad.

"What?" he demanded. "What is it? What?!"

Forrest lips twisted up into a smile, a genuine, relieved smile. "I've figured it out, Father. I know how to leave the dreamweave."

"What?" Leo screamed. "WHAT? What are you talking about, you damned brat?!"

Forrest gave the monster that was supposed to be his father a sad smile. "Goodbye, Father." He waved his hand, as though clearing away fog, and just like that, Leo was gone. Siegbert's body vanished. The wind stopped. Overhead, the clouds broke up, twisted away from the sky like drapes. Suddenly, Forrest was alone, alone and alive when minutes ago he'd feared that every breath would be his last.

No more, he thought. No more fear. I know what to do now.

* I REWROTE THIS CHAPTER, LIKE, A THOUSAND BLOODY TIMES. EVEN THIS VERSION ISN'T ENTIRELY RIGHT, BUT IT'S A HECK OF A LOT CLOSER TO WHAT I WANTED.