Authors: Cameron Jace
“And Three—“
Before Loki finished counting, Snow White opened her eyes.
14
Snow White’s demonic eyes flipped open. They looked as dead as black buttons sewn to her eye sockets, like black coins that rested on the eyes of the deceased, sucking Loki’s soul into darkness. With her blood red lips and sharp fangs, she snarled at him.
“Three,” Loki heard Fable say enthusiastically. She still had her eyes closed and her face tightened, unlike terrified Axel.
The way Snow White became snow-bite in a flip of a switch was unbelievable. Loki wondered if this ever happened to Prince Charming when he tried to kiss her.
Everything changed in milliseconds. Axel hammered down hard. It was one effective hit, finally letting the air out of his lungs with a hysterical scream, like a mad samurai jumping out of the pages of a Manga. He acted out of fear, not courage.
The glass coffin broke open, splinters flying in every direction, and shards of glass scattering on the floor. Snow White yelped, as if her awakening was just as painful as being staked. She turned her head and growled at Axel.
“Oh my God,” Fable shrieked, having opened her eyes. Loki didn’t have time to comfort her, or ask her if she changed her mind about Snow White being so beautiful after she saw this. “Oh. My. God.” Fable might’ve repeated the phrase forever, forgetting about the other million words that would express her surprise.
The reason why everyone was still alive was that the crack in the glass coffin wasn’t big enough for Snow White to leap out. Axel had just cracked the part over her chest open, the rest of the coffin remained unbroken. Contrary to common belief, Loki had known from previous experiences that vampires took a few minutes to adjust to their surroundings when they woke up.
The vampire princess tried to reach her hands out and grab for Loki’s arms. Loki had about one hundredth of a fraction of one tenth of a second to sink his Alicorn into her heart. Faster than a scared pussycat, he pounced down on her and staked her in the heart. His grip was so tight on the stake the knuckles of his fingers whitened. He held his grip longer than usual, staring at her, and he wasn’t going to let go until she went back to sleep.
Snow White let out another yelp, wrapping her cold hands around Loki’s, sending a slight shiver through his body when they touched. Her hands were too cold and again, Loki felt something strange touching her, as if she managed to pass her feelings to his soul. It bugged Loki that he felt as if she was blaming him about something.
Why do I always feel that I’m the bad one when it comes to her? I really wish this feeling would just go away.
Blood gushed out from her heart around the stake. It covered their hands, and splattered on his face. Snow White’s upper body leaned forward in shock and her black eyes stared at Loki. She didn’t look angry as much as betrayed. Loki could swear that he could hear Axel and Fable breathing behind him. It was an intense moment, and the little Snow White princess was a fighter. She didn’t give in easily.
Finally, Snow White surrendered, her eyes turning into the loveliest ocean-blue color again. She was in her Sleeping Death.
Her eyes were so beautiful that Loki couldn’t let her head fall back into the coffin without assistance. He had to hold her by the shoulders, placing his other hand under head so she could rest upon it like a pillow.
“May you sleep in peace,” he found himself whispering to her.
“Is she dead?” Axel asked. With his back against the mirror and a hammer in one hand, he looked like a psycho killer—so did Loki with the stake and blood on his hands.
“Temporarily,” Loki said, looking at the blood on his hands.
The blood of Snow White is on my hands. If she turns out to be the real Snow White, I must be the worst person in the world. What am I doing?
“Temporarily? You mean she could wake up again?” Axel freaked out.
“Not on her own. Only if someone pulls the stake out,” Loki explained, remembering that he hadn’t succeeded in killing most of the vampires because of this silly fact.
Fable moaned with a double layer of hands over her mouth. Then she pointed speechlessly at the blood gushing out of Snow White’s heart around the stake.
Loki wanted to kneel before her, and beg her not to hate him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Her wounds will heal when she wakes up and feeds—if we let her. And don’t ask me to pull the stake out now,” Loki gathered the courage to talk in a slightly aggressive tone to her. She nodded obediently.
“Why would anyone want to pull the stake out?” Axel asked.
“Someone who wants her back as a vampire, probably another vampire like her,” Loki guessed.
“So what now?” Fable asked reluctantly.
“I’m glad you asked,” Loki said, pulling out his phone with the notes from the Dreamhunter notebook. “Now, I will have to enter her dream and kill her in it once again so she stays in this Sleeping Death forever.”
“It’s time you explain to us how this dream-hocus-pocus works,” Axel said.
“I’m going to explain this once, so please pay attention,” Loki said, “Vampires are immortal demons, which according to my notebook are called Demortals. Generally, Demortals don’t die. When a vampire hunter stakes them, the Demortals enter a state called the Sleeping Death, the same as mentioned in the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White’s tale. It makes the vampires look dead while they’re only sleeping until someone pulls the stake out.”
“So there’s really no way to kill them?” Axel said.
“The one and only way to really kill a Demortal is to enter their dream after you stake them and actually kill them again in that dream. The Demortals dreams take place in a realm called the Dreamworld. If they’re staked in the Dreamworld, their brains freeze and they will never wake up in our world, not even when you pull the stake out.”
Fable wanted to take a peek into the Dreamhunter’s notebook as she became more curious about it. “What is this Dreamworld like?”
“I haven’t read much about it yet, but think of it like a rabbit hole, one that is six levels deep. The waking world, which we live in now, is the earth. The Dreamworld, where a Dreamhunter kills a demon in their sleep, is the first level down the rabbit hole.”
“Six levels?” Fable snatched the notebook. “That’s awesome.”
“Yes,” Loki nodded. “Somewhere the notebook mentioned a forbidden place called ‘Six Dreams Under’, but that’s of no concern to us, because I just need to kill her in the ‘First Dream Under’, which is simply like the dreams we all know about.”
“May I ask an annoying question?” Axel said.
“No,” Fable said.
“Who wrote this notebook?” Axel said.
“I don’t know,” Loki shrugged his shoulders. “Many articles are signed by an A.V.H, though.”
“I think his name is ‘All Vampires go to Hell’,” Axel speculated.
“So that’s it? You just enter the dream, stake the vampire again and come back?” Fable said.
“That’s all I know so far.”
“Count me in,” Axel said.
“And you?” Loki asked Fable.
She tried to avoid his gaze.
“Fable?” Loki demanded.
“Look,” she said, unconsciously wiggling her nose under her glasses. “I will help you if this is a good thing for our town, so the teenage killings and disappearances stop. But you promise me, Loki, that if we find out she needs help like she told you, we help her.”
Loki was hesitant. He didn’t want to promise and lie to her again.
“Promise me, Loki,” Fable raised a warning finger in the air. “Doesn’t the fact that she asked for your help mean anything to you?”
She is only fooling me because I have a weakness for monster girls. You have no idea.
“I promise. Cross my heart,” Loki said, hating himself for lying to her again.
“And, Loki?” Fable asked, gazing sensationally at him. “Come back alive.”
This moment made Loki feel even worse about himself. It was a good feeling having found a small family. It felt good but also strange, because he’d always been a loner as long as he’d lived in the Ordinary World—his mom didn’t really count in her ghostly condition. Having others caring for him, and him caring for them, was beautiful but also a responsibility and an attachment. He was doing all of this to go home, and not to make friends that he’d end up wanting to stay with in Sorrow.
“Now, it’s time to tell you about the dream ritual that allows me to enter the Dreamworld,” Loki said.
Following the instructions from the notebook, Loki placed two of the mirrors opposite to each other with Snow White’s coffin in between. This way the two mirrors reflected one another as if they were staring into infinity. It was the only way to enter the Dreamworld.
“Mirror number one mirrors mirror number two, while mirror number two mirrors mirror number one mirroring mirror number two, and so on,” Loki read from his phone. “Can you imagine it?”
Axel stood with wide eyes, mouth ajar, looking at one of the mirrors. “Wow. This is trippy, and so cool. Why don’t they teach us this stuff in school?”
Loki pulled a piece of chalk out of his bag and drew a huge circle on the wooden floor, encompassing the mirrors and the coffin in the middle.
“That’s like creating a medium to commune with the other worlds,” Fable said, “In your case, the Dreamworld.”
“Exactly,” Loki agreed. “It’s called the Epidaurus Circle, named after an ancient Greek town. A high priest used to come and heal ill people in the middle of a circle like this one. He healed them by entering their dreams.”
“Except that in your case, you’re killing them,” Axel noted with a forefinger on his lower lip.
“I understand why you have to use mirrors,” Fable said. “Mirrors have been used to imprison demons, and commune with other worlds throughout history.”
“Not to mention that Bloody Mary hides in one of these,” Axel stepped into the circle, marking his territory.
“I’d prefer it if you get out of the circle,” Loki warned him. “According to my notebook, this circle will become a monstrous gate sucking non-Dreamhunters into a nasty world beyond your imagination. Only Dreamhunters are allowed inside.”
Axel jumped out awkwardly, checking his clothes and looking around as if something from the circle had stuck to them.
Loki handed a number of candles to Fable; “You know what to do with these, right?” he winked at her.
Fable smirked. “Yeah, a witch always does,” Fable lit the candles one by one and placed them carefully adjacent to the circle. For a wannabe witch, this was as easy as ABC.
“Now we pull down the curtains,” Loki read from the notebook. “Axel?”
Axel jumped eagerly and pulled the curtains, conjuring darkness into the room, except for the candle-lit circle in the middle.
“Perfect setting,” Fable said. “Romantic, I have to say.”
“And I thought I was the one who was weird,” Axel mumbled, flicking her earlobe with his finger.
“Everything inside the Epidaurus Circle is called the Dream Temple. If you want to be my assistants, you’ll need to learn the terminology.”
“Whateva ya say, boss,” Fable giggled.
Loki grabbed his bag and got into the Dream Temple. He pulled out two ancient Obol coins he’d found in the bag and placed them on Snow White’s eyes. He was only following the instructions from the notebook. It said that the coins prevented the dreamer, in that case Snow White, from connecting the waking world to the Dreamworld with her eyes. It was a precaution used because some evil entities in the Dreamworld might want to escape to the waking world.”
Then Loki pulled out an hourglass from Charmwill’s backpack, and placed it inside the circle.
“So that’s what that for?” Axel knotted his eyebrows.
“It’s apparently an hourglass, but the notebook describes it as a ‘Waker’,” Loki read. “It has a switch where I can set the amount of sand, thus the time, I want to spend in the Dreamworld, and it only works inside the Dream Temple. The maximum time allowed in any dream is
two and forty
minutes.”
“What does ‘two and forty minutes’ mean?” Axel said.
“It’s a fancy word of saying ‘forty-two minutes’,” Fable said. “I remember I read that phrase in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which I’m sure you haven’t heard of.”
“Does it have zombies in it?” Axel said.
“It’s a Romance. Juliet drinks a poisonous potion that puts her to sleep for ‘two and forty’ minutes,” Fable said then suddenly stopped in the middle of her sentence, and looked at Loki. “Does that mean that Juliet’s poisonous potion might have been a Sleeping Death, too?”
“Please,” Loki waved his hand. “I’d rather not analyze.”
“You’re right; too much analyzing will cause confusion. We have to focus on Snow White’s dream right now,” Fable said. “
“So once the all the sand falls through the Waker, the Dreamhunter’s connection to the Dreamworld ends and he wakes up?” Axel wondered.
“Yes, as long as nothing prevents the Dreamhunter from waking up,” Loki nodded.
“What do you mean by that?” Fable frowned. “Could you stay trapped in the Dreamworld?”
“The notebook mentions that the Dreamworld could be dangerous. Previous Dreamhunters were unable to wake up from it, but it never explained how or why it happened. However, there’s another tool that allows me to send you a signal if I’m in danger and need help,” Loki said and pulled out a red ball of thread from the bag. “It’s called an ‘Ariadne Fleece.’”
“A ball of thread?” Axel scowled. “Looks like it belongs to someone’s grandma.”
“Watch closely,” Loki took the tip of the fleece and touched one of the mirror’s surfaces with it. The meeting point turned the mirror into a water-like surface, rippling as if he’d thrown a pebble in it.
“Now that’s real magic,” Fable said.
Slowly, the Ariadne Fleece became a part of the mirror, sticking to its surface from one side while Loki pulled the other and wrapped it around his wrist. Once he did that, the length of the thread between the spot in the mirror and Loki’s hand became invisible.
“Now, I have a physical connection between the waking world and the Dreamworld through this thread,” Loki explained, reading from his phone. “And although this magical thread stretches for infinity, it will stay invisible to everyone, and untouchable, too.”