Defying the Dragon

Nightmare released

Nightmare released

All day, Misty thought about the past and how she could right the wrongs she did.

After almost nine months in her play with that enticing warlock, things started to get weird. He began with small dark spells. A harmless game, he told her smiling, but she never was comfortable feeling that slimy magic clinging to her skin. He didn't seem to be one of the dark ones. Just a little wicked. Just like Rikat. Misty knew that was why she gave him a chance. He reminded her of the lonely dragon she left behind and made her forget even for a little while about him. So she ignored him at first, telling herself she had nothing to worry about. But things got creepier and creepier with the passing of time. He evolved into someone obsessive and oppressive, trying to manipulate her into doing things she normally wouldn't have done. She took pleasure in doing some of those things, but when he started with the darker magic involving blood, she told him to leave.

He left with the parting words: "My knife, your back," spoken with a magic-infused promise.

It gave her chills then; it still gives her chills every time she remembered that moment. But she thought herself powerful. That he couldn't hurt her. She thought wrong.

She should have known nothing would be that simple.

The next day, she found a letter on her pillow.

"I will become your worst nightmare. I will find your worst fears. I will understand what makes you tick. Then I'll control you like a remote control toy. I'll start you out with small tasks you find distasteful and work you up to things you never dreamed you were capable of. Why will you do all this for me? Because I'll dangle the illusion of love before you and let you get close enough to almost attain it. Then I'll just ask you for one more little thing, to prove your devotion, of course. When you have become the person your old self would have loathed beyond all others, I will disappear. Why? Because that is the end of my game and you will mean nothing to me; just a broken toy. I am your worst nightmare.

She read it twice. It was filled with malevolence and eternal promises. So the first thing she did was to ward off her penthouse and then create a protective veil around the city. She remembered her grandmother laughing about her veil, telling her it was so thin it couldn't and wouldn't keep a rabid bunny out if it wanted to get in. But she didn't want to keep creatures of magic out. She wanted something subtle that would tell her every time he passed through the veil. The ward on her penthouse was sturdier. She made it especially to keep him out.

The next day the disappearances began.

She didn't even think about it, at first, that he had something to do with the girls disappearing in the witching hour. It should have. The first ones might have been a coincidence, but the third and the fourth? The others that came after them? All disappeared in the witching hour. She didn't pay attention to the mortal news until she got the second letter. The letter was left attached to her door, his magic couldn't penetrate her ward.

"Your worst nightmare is my finest dream, who is to say what is right and wrong? I dream of taking you and savoring the moment. Until then, I just have to satisfy myself with your replacements. I dream of teaching you who really is the powerful one. The deaths before yours will be my academy award, their screams, and death rattle to my encore. I offered you the chance to join me but you refused like a sulky child, unwilling to learn the power and glory of dark ways. I wish to thank-you, not to do so would be such bad form. Thank you for becoming my quarry. The joy of ultimate victory is sweet yet transitory, it's a million battles in between that I live for."

And with that letter the dreams of what happened to the girls that disappeared began.

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