Page 3 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

I didn’t like waking up in a standing position. My knees buckled, and firm hands rushed to steady me. The world blurred and shifted until shapes and colors that made sense locked into place.

The grove where I stood was sunken, and a ring of towering trees stood guard at the lip of the embankment. Their roots cut out of the dirt before dipping back into the small hillside, leaving me in the middle of a tangle of bark and shadow.

“Welcome back to Skalterra, little Nightmare.”

It was that voice again, the one that called for me in the shop. The old man from my dream stood in front of me, his hair more white than silver in the mottled green shadows of day. His goggles perched on top of his head, and he had his hands jammed in the pockets of his leather duster.

“I’m sure you have questions, and so do we.”

“No,”

I gasped and stumbled away, ripping myself from the hands that held my shoulders.

“We don’t want to hurt you,”

a new voice said in my ear. The swelling in Ferrin’s face had gone down since I’d seen him in the tunnel under the fort. His leather shoulder armor wrinkled the edges of the vest he wore over a simple white shirt, and the thick, metal-rimmed goggles pushed up his forehead made his hair stick up like a cockatoo’s feathers. He looked like a steampunk professor, but he’d killed the Grimguard. He was dangerous.

But he also wasn’t real. This was another dream. It had to be.

Behind him, the old man, Galahad, drew a hand out of his pocket, alight with silver fire, and I turned heel.

Nope. Absolutely not. Dream or real, I wasn’t getting stabbed again.

“Grab her!”

Galahad yelled. Ferrin’s fingers scratched at my back, but I was already sprinting for the embankment.

I grabbed onto gnarled roots for extra purchase as I heaved myself out of Ferrin’s reach. Blue hair fell in my face, obscuring my vision, and I suddenly missed my usual haircut as I fought to push thick tresses out of my way.

“Orla! Tiernan!”

Ferrin shouted just as I pulled myself up over the embankment lip. A river rushed up ahead, and maroon tents stood between the trees to my left, so I banked right, sprinting between tree trunks and over roots.

I thought I might actually get away, but then pain exploded in my flank. I collapsed in the dirt, howling.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry!”

The short-haired woman leaned overhead, her forehead creased with guilt.

“Ferrin said to catch her, not ash her!”

Tiernan appeared next to the woman.

“She’s not coming back from that. Put her out of her misery.”

The woman bit her lip, shifting in and out of focus overhead me as I writhed in agony, unable to escape the burning in my side.

“Orla,”

Tiernan warned. Orla gulped and pulled round goggles down over her eyes in sudden resolve.

“Wait!”

I lifted a hand, but the woman was already raising a blazing knife of emerald green.

“I’m sorry!”

she wailed, and the forest dissipated with a blinding cut that slashed across my throat.

“No!”

My hand flew to my neck as I jolted awake, trying to make sense of the slatted ceiling overhead and the arms that held me. I craned my head back to lock eyes with Liam, who stared down at me with a pale face and wide eyes.

“Oh, god no!”

I scrambled away, trying to regain my dignity as best I could with my short forest sprint still replaying in my mind.

“You need to lie still,”

Liam said.

“I called for Ethel, but—”

“She can’t hear you from downstairs.”

I clawed my way to my feet. Jonquil sat next to the register with my phone between her paws. The email notification was still bright on my screen, so I couldn’t have been out for too long.

Oh, god. Von Leer Admissions.

“Wren Warrender, come back.”

Galahad’s voice echoed in my head, and I winced.

“Careful!”

Liam tried to put an arm around me, but I shoved him away.

“I’m fine.”

Sleep beckoned for me to return to its embrace, wrapping around my brain like tendrils as Galahad’s voice became louder.

“Wren Warrender, I command you to return to Skalterra.”

Hell. No.

I shooed Jonquil off my phone. I needed to escape. If I passed out again, Liam would make sure to alert Gams properly this time. If he got Gams worried, she’d call Mom, and Mom would fly home, and her book tour abroad that she’d been so excited for would be ruined. And I’d already almost ruined it once.

“I just need to lie down.”

I stumbled for the door that led to the apartment staircase and hurried up the creaky steps.

“Are you sure you should be alone?”

Liam called after me.

“I’m fine!”

I spun around on the top step to shake my phone at him threateningly.

“And if you tell my grandmother, I’ll find a way to make sure you spend the rest of your life scooping bagels.”

I whisked down the hall.

“Orla wants to apologize, Wren Warrender,”

Galahad said as I staggered into my bedroom.

“And I need to check my email,”

I snapped back.

“So you can hear me.”

My room twisted as I reached my bed, but before I could slump forward onto the mattress, I turned upright, back in the same clearing as before.

Orla tried to hide behind Galahad and Ferrin, but she was taller than both men, so her forehead stuck out behind Ferrin’s cockatoo hair.

Graduation night must’ve stressed me out more than I’d realized. Recurring dreams couldn’t be a good sign, though this was admittedly more of a continuation than a proper recurrence.

“Wren Warrender, we only want to talk,”

Galahad said.

“It’s just Wren, and you aren’t real.”

I tried to step away, but it was as if my legs were fused together and rooted to the spot. I looked down, and my stomach lurched. It wasn’t that they were fused together, it was that I didn’t have legs at all, an.

“rooted” was a far more appropriate word than I would’ve liked.

I had on leather armor over a simple brown tunic, but the hem of my shirt fluttered loosely over not my waist, but the sturdy trunk of a tree.

“What the hell—”

“It’s okay!”

Ferrin stepped forward.

“It’s so we can talk without you running.”

“I’m a tree!”

I screamed.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real.

So why did it all feel so vivid?

“No, you’re a Nightmare,”

Galahad said.

“I constructed you this way for your own safety.”

He glared at Orla, who blushed.

“You’re the nightmare,”

I shot back.

“My nightmare. This isn’t real.”

Ferrin laughed.

“In a way, yes. We are your nightmare, but we’re sorry to say that we are just as real as you.”

“I’m a tree!”

I twisted my torso, trying to break free of the bark.

“A birch, by the looks of things,”

Orla piped up, peering at me from behind Ferrin.

“Interesting choice, though we shouldn’t be surprised considering the hair.”

I thought she was taking a dig at my undercut, and my hand slapped to the base of my neck in defense of the hairstyle. However, the undercut was gone, replaced by thick blue tresses.

“I did not choose to be a tree!”

I snarled.

“No, but you chose to be a birch, and the blue hair was your choice too, whether you realize it or not. That’s what Nightmares do. They take on their ideal form, so your ideal tree must be a birch, the same way your ideal hair is blue. Nightmares taking on their ideal forms makes for faster, stronger soldiers!”

I had never considered dying my hair, but I remembered Gams beaming over her blue chickens earlier that morning.

“Von Leer colors!”

she’d proudly explained.

“Why do you keep calling me a nightmare?”

I demanded.

Galahad pulled his goggles down over his eyes. His hand glowed silver, and dirt pooled itself at his feet, growing taller and taller, until it had surpassed him in height. Clay hardened into skin and chainmail, and a person stood before us, his face blank and passive.

“This is a Nightmare.”

Galahad pushed his goggles back up to better survey his creation.

“They’re made of dust, Skal, and the sleeping consciousnesses of the people in your world. We use them as soldiers to cut back on bloodshed.”

There was something off-putting and vaguely horrible about the man in front of me.

“What’s wrong with him?”

I asked. He hadn’t so much as blinked yet. Granted, he at least wasn’t half-tree, so he was doing better than I was.

“This is how they’re supposed to be, trapped in a dream-state. Pliable, easy to control, and immune to pain.”

Galahad gave the man a shove. He wavered under the hit, but remained passive and ready.

“The real question is, what’s wrong with you?”

“His mind is asleep?”

I waved a hand in front of his face.

“And mine isn’t? Even though my real body is?”

“Nightmares aren’t fully aware of what’s happening. It makes them obedient and fearless. Good things to have in a soldier.”

“Until they end up lucid!”

Orla interjected.

“Like you!”

“And in seventy-two years, I’ve only ever seen one before now,”

Galahad added.

“It’s not supposed to happen.”

I frowned, wondering if I’d also been a blank-faced golem before I’d woken up on top of that fort.

No.

No, I couldn’t have been, because this wasn’t real. It was all made up. I was stressed. It had been a matter of time before all my anxiety caught up to me like this.

“How do they get back to their bodies?”

I asked, staring at the glassy-eyed soldier.

There was a flash of silver fire as Galahad procured a short blade from the air and dug it into the soldier’s chest. The man gave a gentle gasp, then dissipated into ash, clothing and all.

“Oh,”

I said simply.

“It’s not always so violent,”

Ferrin assured me.

“A nocturmancer like Galahad is able to passively release all their existing Nightmares at once, but then you’d wake up too.”

Galahad’s hand glowed silver again, and a shiver ran up my legs as tree bark gave way to pants, boots, and legs.

“Please don’t run,”

Orla begged.

I stepped forward, testing my reformed legs, and peered at the neat pile of ash where the Nightmare had stood. When I raised my eyes to Galahad’s, he smiled, but the way the expression pulled at the wrinkles on his face told me it was forced.

“Right,”

I said.

“I’d love to hear more, but I really do need to check my email.”

I grabbed Galahad’s grizzled hand and shoved his silver blade into my own gut.

I woke up face down on my quilt with my knees digging into the wooden floor. Worried knocking echoed behind me, accompanied by Liam’s nervous voice on the other side of my bedroom door.

“Wren? Come on, just say something so I know—”

“Why are you up here?”

I wiped drool off my cheek as I shouted through the door.

“I was worried!”

“Who’s watching the shop?”

“Jonquil, I think.”

My phone was still in my hand, but I’d barely read the email header when Galahad’s voice boomed at me from inside my head.

“Wren Warrender, you will not play games with me!”

“I just—”

Liam said from the hall.

“Go away!”

I snarled at them both.

The phone slipped from my hand, and the wooden floorboards rushed towards my face as sleep reclaimed me.

I was a tree again.

Galahad’s face was ruddy behind his white beard, and a muscle jumped in Ferrin’s jaw. Orla wrung her hands and glanced up the embankment. Tiernan and the girl in yellow robes from the night before watched us from between the trees that lined our clearing.

“I was trying to read my email,”

I growled. I knew Von Leer didn’t expect me to email them back right away, but it was killing me not knowing what was waiting in my inbox.

“And I’m trying to save both our realms,”

Galahad retorted.

“You can have your legs back after you’ve listened.”

“This is a dream!”

I snapped.

“My brain is broken because of Linsey Harper and Von Leer and that stupid bagel boy, and now I’m stuck here!”

Silver flames lit in Galahad’s hand, and he procured a glowing staff from the air. He dragged it in the dirt between us to draw two circles.

“I could’ve fetched you a stick,”

Ferrin sighed.

“You shouldn’t waste your Skal.”

“We’ll refuel in Tulyr.”

Galahad stepped back.

“Skalterra and Keldori. Two worlds. Ours and yours.”

“I’m from Earth.”

It sounded stupid to say out loud, and they must’ve thought so too, because they laughed.

“Skalterra and Keldori are both Earth,”

Ferrin said simply.

“If that makes sense.”

It didn’t.

“And this is Skalterra?”

I looked up at the tree canopies. They looked an awful lot like the ones at home.

Of course they do, I told myself. I made them up. This is my dream.

“We used to be one world,”

Galahad said.

“Magicians and non-Magicians living together before the Rift. Unfortunately, magical warfare is particularly volatile, and the Skal Wars of 1616 nearly ripped reality apart. To protect everyone, four sorcerers came together to sequester the Magicians in their own realm. That new realm, that new reality is what became Skalterra. And that is where you are now.”

“And the Skal remained in Keldori, your realm.”

Ferrin tapped the glowing bottles of liquid at his belt.

“It’s the source of our creation magick. It bleeds through to Skalterra in the cracks between our worlds, and we harvest it at springs. The limited supply has been enough to keep the Skal Wars from returning”

“Mmhmm.”

What if Von Leer did need me to respond right away? What if the longer I was trapped in this nightmare, the less likely the school was to accept me.

“Sounds very real and very important.”

“She doesn’t believe us,”

Orla whispered.

“Orla, Tiernan is calling you,”

Ferrin said.

“I don’t hear him.”

“Leave, Orla.”

Galahad’s voice boomed, and Orla scurried to join the two figures on the embankment. Galahad narrowed his eyes at me.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe us or not, Keldorian. You told me your name and answered my call. The only way to escape my employ is to wait for me to permanently release you. Otherwise, I’ll keep dragging you back.”

I focused on my legs. Orla had said Galahad had made me a tree, but I had chosen the type, which meant I had some degree of control over myself. That made sense, considering this was all happening inside my head.

The bark where my knees should’ve been snapped and creaked, but the two men didn’t notice.

“And why have you employed me?”

I asked in an effort to keep them distracted while I concentrated on my ankles. I tried to imagine them there, contained in the wood of the tree.

“What do you need from me?”

“The Four Magicians separated our worlds over four centuries ago,”

Galahad said.

“but it wasn’t long before one of the four, a Magician named Saergrim, broke from the others. He wanted the Skal we’d left in Keldori, and sought to re-merge our worlds and sow chaos that he alone would have control over. The other three stopped Saergrim by binding him in a glacier with a curse that lives as long as their descendants still walk Skalterra.”

A splintering snap signaled my freedom. My freed legs weren’t quite legs, though. They were made of rigid wood and awkward joints, like a poorly crafted marionette puppet.

But they did what I needed them to do.

I bowled between Galahad and Ferrin, running on my makeshift legs towards the embankment. Perhaps jumping in that river I’d seen before would be enough to wake me. I just needed to make it up—

“I’ve got her!”

one of the watching figures yelled.

“Tiernan, don’t!”

To his credit, Tiernan’s aim was much better than Orla’s. I didn’t feel any pain this time as the blazing ball of golden fire exploded against my back.

I opened my eyes to the dusty floor beneath my bed. A groan worked its way up my chest as I pushed myself into a sitting position

“And then in the fourth grade, I finally caught my first fish, but Riley—”

“What are you talking about?”

I snapped at Liam, who was talking on the other side of the door.

“I don’t know. You haven’t said anything, so I figured I’d just keep talking to make you feel better. Is it working?”

“I can do this all day, Wren Warrender,”

Galahad growled in my head. I ignored him, searching for my phone.

Von Leer was waiting. I needed to know—

Hands gripped me at my shoulder and wrists, but at least Galahad had let me have my legs back this time. I was on my knees in the clearing, looking up at Galahad and Ferrin while Tiernan and Orla kept me still.

“It’s not my fault,”

Galahad was saying to Ferrin.

“It’s not the same when they’re lucid.”

“Then figure it out fast,”

Ferrin said in a hushed tone.

“If we can’t control her—”

“It’s not about control.”

Galahad turned back to me.

“Wren Warrender, you’ll listen carefully this time, because both our realms depend on it.”

I tried to jerk my arms away from Tiernan and Orla, but their grips tightened, and Orla whispered an apology. Galahad bent down to look me in the eyes.

“I don’t care about your Saergrim,”

I said.

“I don’t care if you are real or not. I just want to read my email.”

Galahad stepped to the side, revealing the young girl from the night before. She lingered at the edge of the clearing and hid the bottom half of her face behind giant sleeves that hung past her fingertips. Shifting golden sunlight danced between the green shadows of the forest canopy, catching the golden details of the girl’s robes in a way that made me think she was more suited to this forest than she had been to the stuffy fort she’d been fleeing.

“That girl is Fana the Divine Sovereign Fireld, and she is the last living descendant of the Three Magicians,”

Galahad explained.

“Saergrim’s most loyal followers, the Grimguards, have hunted down the rest, while we, the Riftkeepers, have tried to defend them. The other two bloodlines have already fallen. Fana is all that’s left. If she dies, Saergrim is released. Both our worlds will crumble.”

“And the Grimguard—” I said.

“Will kill her.”

“Right.”

“You don’t seem too perturbed by the fact that the fate of existence as you know it depends on keeping a ten-year-old alive,”

Galahad said.

“Because Orla was right. She doesn’t believe us.”

Ferrin’s laugh undercut the direness of the situation that Galahad was trying to sell.

“It’s useless. If she doesn’t believe us, what good is she?”

The girl, Fana, stared at me from where she continued to lurk. She reminded me of a sunflower with her yellow hood pulled up over her hair, framing her dark face.

“You want me to protect her?”

I asked.

“I can’t. I can’t just sleep all day. I have a life. I have a job. I have an email—”

“We only need you until we can get her to Ferrin’s stronghold in the mountains.”

Galahad pulled at his white beard.

“And Grimguards are nocturnal. We don’t need you during the day.”

I laughed. This was ridiculous. Terrifying, but ridiculous. And definitely not real.

Ferrin clicked his tongue.

“I’m with the Nightmare. It’s a bad idea.”

“She can’t die. She’s lucid enough to understand more complex commands. She can keep coming back with the previous night’s memories and aid us until we get to the Second Sentinel.”

“She’ll get in the way.”

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”

Galahad’s tone carried a foreboding growl.

“Tiernan, Orla. Go with Ferrin back to the tents. Take Fana. You should eat.”

“But—”

Tiernan tightened his grip on my arm and shoulder, and I tried to shake him free.

“She won’t run.”

Galahad narrowed his pale eyes at me, and I smirked.

“I’m releasing her soon, which will be much less painful for her than running.”

Tiernan and Orla let me go, and I staggered to my feet, rubbing my wrists.

“Wren Warrender,”

Galahad continued as the others retreated up the embankment.

“I shall call upon you at the same time every night. I recommend you make yourself comfortable before I do.”

I pushed blue hair back over my shoulder.

“You aren’t real,”

I asserted.

“The fate of your world rests on you. If Saergrim is released from his prison, there is no telling the chaos he will wreak. Both Keldori and Skalterra—”

“I know.”

“No,”

he said darkly. He was still holding the blade I’d used to stab myself with several deaths ago.

“You don’t. And if you don’t think this is real, then let me give you something a bit more material to encourage you.”

He grabbed my left hand with an agility I didn’t know old men capable of, and the blade cut across my palm in the shape of .

“T”. I braced for blood, but instead, silver light glowed from the cut before resealing the skin together.

“What did you do?”

I yanked my hand away. A silver “T”

of puckered skin scarred my left palm.

It’s not real, I told myself. Except that it freaking felt real as hell. I hissed through my teeth, trying to will the sharp sting away.

“That’s the Curse of Tulyr,”

he said simply.

“Lucid Nightmares are too few and too useful to let go to waste, but you’ve made it clear you have no intention of aiding us. I can’t have you killing yourself every time I summon you, so I’ve limited the amount of times you’ll be able to die here.”

I blanched.

It’s not real.

“What does that mean?”

“If you die five times in Skalterra as a Nightmare, then Wren Warrender dies in her sleep in Keldori. Five lives are plenty to last you until the Second Sentinel, but if at any point you try to save yourself over Fana, I will end you myself then and there.”

“But that’s stupid! I thought you needed me. How am I supposed to protect anyone if I’m dead?”

“You’re useless if you keep killing yourself to escape. Consider it motivation. And best to keep this our secret. The others are soft, and I don’t need them putting themselves in danger if they think your life might be on the line.”

“You’d really kill me?”

“To save both our worlds? In a heartbeat, Wren Warrender. I’ll see you tonight. I release you from service. For now.”

The forest and Galahad dissolved, and I woke up face-down on my floor. My hand that still reached for my discarded phone smarted, but when I pushed myself up out of a puddle of my own drool, it wasn’t the email that had my attention, but the puckered silver skin on my left palm in the shape of a “T”.