The Creatures Series

Fourteenth Night

Fourteenth NightCreatures of the Night

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##### Fourteenth Night #####

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Everything is silent while I'm running. I'm pretty sure that I'm panting hard through my open mouth, my body feels like I'm about to fall any second, and everything besides the lonely path I'm walking on is in blur. It's dark, almost black and grey. Just like in the mute movie.

I've been in here before; I'm positive about that. How can I forget about this corridor? I've seen practically a thousand times of this scenery. This is where I—

And that's when he shows up.

BLACK••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

As the night sky that he roams, his short hair is flying around his head, blending with the soft night's wind. His eyes are the same. And that palest skin is peeking through his closed, dark jacket, with end blow by the air.

Water starts to

DROP••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Strongly as the rain without shattering his intention, although the night is still young.

VEIL•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Rushing from his veins, begging mine to flow out and spill to the ground.

He comes to hunt me down, just like in my previous dreams.

I run even though I know my end. I just can't help it. For some reason, I can't help myself for feeling afraid that I will lose my life.

I trip and he shoots me. The bullet sinks into my skin. But just as soon as it reaches into me, it's also being thrown out almost at the same time.

Another shot follow by another shot; the pattern stays the same. But before the fifth bullet can hit me, I dodge it.

For some reason, my power doesn't work in this dream. I don't know why, but every time I tried I always get myself killed in the process. That's why I stopped using it and started taking advantage of my physical ability.

He's ready for the last bullet. Again. But I won't let him kill me again in my own dream. Well, at least not right now. I need to find a way to stop myself from having this same nightmare over and over again. And the only way to do that is by—

"Wait!" I held my hand up in the air at his direction. "Why do you want to kill me?" I ask him.

For a moment he just stands there. I'm hoping for an answer, but he just kept silent. Finally, he lowers his gun to his side and walk towards me.

His footsteps echo through the hallway as he walks closer. By the help of a little light from a dim light ball, I can see his features clearer. He's wearing a combat boots that have many straps and heels at each boots, making him taller than he supposed to be. He wears a long pair of pants and t-shirt underneath his long leather jacket. I also notice a pair of gloves that cover his hands, one used to hold his gun.

He stops just before the light let his face being seen. I look over his black belt style choker that's circling his neck before looking at his dark eyes. That's when I realize that his gaze still look murderously calm. Just like my previous dreams.

"What will you gain by killing me?" I ask him again.

He just stands in front of me, frozen like a statue. No matter how long I've waited for him to reply my questions.

I look over at him again from toe to head, searching for a clue of something that has to do with him. But everything still looks the same as before. There must be something I can use to figure out about him, I thought.

He comes in my dream, already chasing me as the opening every time I finally fall asleep. He never spoke to me before. All he does in my dreams are chasing me and shoot me until I die. And that's it. Just chase and kill.... Chase and kill....

That's it! How can I miss it even though I'm one myself this entire time?

"You're a hunter, aren’t you?" I ask.

And for the first time, I manage to see him show an expression, besides being a cold murderer one. Not many of his face making any changes, but just one part. His eyes looks surprised with eyes widened. Although, he goes back to his original expression soon after he realized that he has being found out.

So I was right, although it's just a plain assumption.

All of a sudden, he points his gun right at me and everything goes black.

Not that I didn't see it coming, anyway.

The wind had died a long time ago, but the fire increases as the replacement of the commotion. I put some supernatural detection as well in Banri ’ s room so that I can tell whether someone is trying to mess with my brain, but none of them are glowing. This causes me to frown, despite the fact that I ’ m on fire. Sometimes I have different dream, like to the fact that that man doesn ’ t kill me immediately, like tonight. I thought I was making a progress on telling who ’ s manipulating my dreams this last couple of weeks. But I guess the afford goes up in smoke. Speaking of smoke ─

Banri immediately snaps his fingers when he sees that I’m not going to do it way too soon, making the fire on me disappear into thin air without any trace remains on me aside from my burned clothes. As a compartment controller and a fire breather, Banri can manipulate fire quite well with his magic. And that doesn’t mean he can’t manipulate other type of fire as well.

“How long has it been?” I ask Banri, not really looking at his direction and more calculating on the damage that has been done by my black fire.

“ The same as always ─ 35 minutes, ” he answers looking at his watch.

But that ’ s impossible! How it is that my dreams always last the very same duration when I made sure that I always made a difference in them? They even start at the very same time ─ 5 hours after I fall asleep.

The only reason why I know this because Banri one night decided not to sleep and instead observed what will happen while I was asleep. He started to detect my little movements and the beginning of the fire ─ which exactly fall at 5 hours after I fell asleep, according to his notes. It ’ s weird that it didn ’ t even pass a single second when the dream started.

It’s been 20 days since our first attempt to figure out what’s wrong with me. Am I having a glimpse of my future? If so, why there’s always something different about it? Who can make changes to the projection of my future? Is future even changeable or not? And if not, the only other thing I can think of is manipulation.

Magic can do many things. Controlling one ’ s dream is one of them, like what Valline used on me. But if someone able to do that ─ let alone without giving out my detections to sense it ─ then that person must be someone really strong.

“Okay, I think we should report this to my parents now,” I say. “We’ve done practically everything in order to learn what’s going on with my dreams lately and we still aren’t able to figure out much. We can’t stop it and why even don’t know what it really is. Experimental period is officially over. Let’s take this case into serious care.”

Banri nods. “But first you might need to change,” he say walking to his closet.

I’d bought some new clothes for me to wear at sleep two weeks ago. But I run out of stock soon after the first week. They burn out one by one each night into something not wearable.

Since I don ’ t have time to buy some, Banri eventually lend some of his shirts for me. He usually gives me the ones with white long sleeves shirt that he usually lend ─ well, technically give, since we both know the shirts won ’ t last long as soon as he hand it over ─ to me.

I was having nightmare every single night after that first one; it practically doesn ’ t want to leave me alone. I feel like I ’ m being haunted by an invisible ghost of the past ─

As soon as I realize that, I let the new shirt Banri has hooked to my fingers slide down to the floor in one very fast second. I don’t pick it up, though. Instead, I push past the door and almost jump on my way to the elevator. Banri even didn’t have time to process what’s going on until the time that the elevator doors closing in front of me.

It’s also a good thing that the elevator is always empty. The magic spell that was cast on the elevator makes it able to save space and time for its ability to separate the passengers from every level with a different elevator and not even having too much room to place.

When I reach the highest floor and the same robotic female voice is asking for identification, I hack the elevator immediately. I know that my parents won’t take any visitors during sleeping hours no matter what happens (except if Sorcier is going to extinct, which is far from happening very soon). The computer obeyed immediately when I set it to open the doors with some cut and knot at the cables.

Once I exited the sliding doors, I didn’t bother to knock and just entered my parent’s room through their office door.

They were both sleep in a lovey-dovey snuggle when I busted in and say, “I have something really important to tell you and you both know that I will not even be here if it’s not a very grave situation. So please excuse me from my rudeness and please listen.”

They separate themselves in an instant and blink a couple of times for adjusting themselves with the figure of my sudden presence.

“What’s wrong, honey?” My mother asks with concern.

I take a deep breath before sighing again, this time with words on the tip of my tongue. “I think I’m being haunted.”

“Are you sure? Have you checked with your detection spell?” My father asks. I already know what he’s going to say right after he says the word ‘check’.

“Yes,” I answer patiently, trying to hold the exaggerating feeling in my chest. “I’ve put it for the past weeks of trial period to decide whether this is a serious case or not to report this to you.” Since I know how busy the two of you can be and I don't want to bother getting their attention on me unless it's something serious.

"And turns out, it is. What's bother is not something alive; that my planted spells can't detect it. It just took me more time to realize that. You must excuse me, because I was too focused in figuring things out from my dream, that I didn't realize about things sooner that I was expected to."

I explain to them all the details since my first being killed nightmare to when I woke up just minutes ago and finally figured everything out.

"But why are you so sure that it's a ghost? Not a chameleonous? An invisible monster? Or an incubus?" My father asks.

Wow. Where does the last one come from? Must be the result of waking him way too early.

"I can still sense him if he is an invisible monster or a chameleonous. But if it's an incubus, then he wouldn't had kept killing me in my dreams and had started his attempt on making me his ─ not that it wouldn't end up as a nightmare as well. The only suspect I can think of leaves me is a ghost. Just think about it. He never leaves any trail behind even for my detection spell to catch, he always gave me the same dream and same ending no matter what happened, and he always had the schedule on time. Ghosts always repeat everything in the exact same way. And what better creature of the night that can always be on time no matter what? A ghost!"

As I explain everything I know about what had been happening on me lately, my parents listened and processed everything in. Then, they walk out to their office while continue discussing the new report I just made.

“I think it’s better if we call the elders to banish this ghost from our Arsene; they always perform the best and strongest rituals,” suggests my father, already start deciding about how to help me.

“No, darling. I don’t think they’re going to be much help. Remember Arsene’s last ritual of making her last seal? They barely able to speak after all of that energy they’d spent. Let’s not take the same risk again, shall we, darling? Why don’t the two of us do it instead? She’s our daughter, after all,” exclaims my mother.

“That will be too risky. We’ll be way too tired after the banishing ritual and you know we can’t let our guards down. We have our duties as well that will not just suddenly stop coming and flowing in and out of nowhere just to freeze. And Arsene is just as important as Sorcier. But we don’t know if some species, clan, or group will attack us suddenly while we are running out of our energy,” my father argues.

“And leave Arsene keep being haunted? I don’t think she can take any of it anymore, right, honey? I know we all are busy, but someone surely can help. Oh, I know!” She snaps her finger and suddenly not moving.

She looks like a senior version of a beautiful French doll every time she does that. Her eyes are staring at something in front of her when they actually aren’t looking at anything in particular. I know what she’s doing. She’s contacting someone. And not just anyone. She’s taking advantage of the blood connection that we have and our similar powers to contact the other member of our family.

In an instant, just like that, she blinks again as a sign that she’s back to us. At the same time, we find not just one, but two figures are standing before us.