Shana ran.
It was all she could do. And even then, she couldn’t manage it alone. She was constantly pushed and pulled by Kathryn, Rae, and Annabelle. They helped her race down halls, climb up and down stairs, and duck through empty classrooms and offices.
All the while, they evaded a vast, monstrous horde of spiders. Big, small, hairy, sleek, bulbous, spindly, they came in all shapes and sizes and types. Some chased after them directly. Others set a variety of traps. There were freakish, sprawled-out, crablike spiders that dug pits and then sprang out of them at the last second. Spindly weavers dropped down from the dark ceilings on silent strands of webbing. They hid in corners, under furniture, behind stairs and lockers. The school was as dark as could be.
And darkness was the greatest ally of this horde of spiders.
Shana shook from head to toe, screamed more often than she’d ever care to admit, and hated the way she involuntarily fought against her friends, squirming and wriggling and flinching at every turn.
Why do we have to keep doing this? Why do we even keep running? Why do we —
“Shana!” Kathryn shouted, shaking Shana by the arm. “How do you normally deal with this nightmare?”
Night…
…mare…?
Shana froze in place for a second, and it took all three of her friends to get her moving again, just in time to escape a burrower leaping up from false tiles beneath where Shana had been standing.
That’s right. This is a nightmare.
I…
I forgot?
Shana’s eyes went wider than ever. How long had they been running? How long had she been screaming? How many brushes with death had they oh-so-barely evaded?
It’s just like the Dream Forge. I got pulled in, immersed so heavily in the —
Shana’s thoughts went blank as she and her friends skidded to a desperate stop before a dead-end, at the end of which was waiting a massive, furry arachnid, forelimbs together like a wicked sorcerer contemplating the best way to kill the innocent intruders who had stumbled into his territory. Kathryn pulled, Annabelle and Rae pushed, and Shana was running again, hyperventilating, struggling not to close her eyes because she couldn’t afford to lose her footing. And more than that, because…
I can’t escape the nightmares like that.
I have to face this and overcome it.
But…
Why did it have to start with spiders? Couldn’t I have warmed up with something different?
She understood now more than ever Kathryn’s struggle with the bitey book beasts. They hadn’t frightened anyone else nearly as much as Kathryn, but…
It was her nightmare.
Now I’m here in my own, and freaking out just as much as her. Probably more. Definitely more.
You know how this works, Shana. Just… get a grip, or —
But her thoughts went blank again as the girls, climbing a staircase to the first basement, two floors up from where they’d started, were faced with a skittering crowd of glittering jade fist-sized spiders. Kathryn and Rae started dancing around them, letting out all sorts of exclamations as they struggled to keep the spiders from getting a purchase on feet or clothing. Annabelle hopped up onto the staircase’s banister and strode up it easily, going almost entirely ignored by the arachnids. And Shana…
Shana was freaking out. She danced light-footed as much as Kathryn and Rae, but she could barely catch her breath at all by this point. She felt dizzy, faint, light-headed, and oh so tired. Why couldn’t she catch a breath? What was this tightness in her chest? And why oh why were there so many spiders?
“Shana, just rush ahead!” Annabelle called from the top of the stairs. “They’re not climbing, they’re all racing down!”
Shana acquiesced, going two then three stairs at a time up the staircase, but halfway to the top, she suddenly froze — thankfully, it was just as the last of the jade spiders skittered down past her.
“They’re… all running away,” Shana said in a hushed voice, turning slowly to look back at the spiders. Sure enough, they were racing around the landing and hustling down the second half of the staircase without sparing the girls a second look.
“Running…” Kathryn started, then gasped.
Shana, Kathryn, Rae, and Annabelle looked up at the top of the stairs, Annabelle slowly backing down the steps until she reached Shana. She slipped her hand into Shana’s, and both girls held on tight to each other.
There was nothing at the top of the stairs. Nothing but darkness.
And yet…
“Something’s coming,” Shana said softly, staring unblinking at the top of the stairs.
“We should… run,” Rae said. “Use one of the other staircases.”
“Yeah, totally,” Kathryn said, nodding.
But none of them moved.
Why am I still staring? Why are any of us? Shouldn’t we… we should… move… right?
But something’s coming. Something is… so we have to be very careful, and — !
Shana suddenly lurched forward, pushing Annabelle ahead and grabbing Rae and Kathryn, pulling them up the stairs with her.
“Hold up!” Kathryn shouted, resisting Shana’s pull, but Shana had momentum and sheer panic on her side.
“I don’t — oh!” Rae started, cutting off as she chanced a glance back. Her face was pale, eyes wide in panic as she ran along with Shana, up the stairs and cutting a sharp left in the first hall.
“What are — oh shoot!” Kathryn cried out, finally getting a chance to look back.
Now they all knew what Shana had sensed, had taken a chance on without ever looking back, until she caught a glimpse of it in the reflection of a window.
The thing that had left them paralyzed on the stairs, the thing that had made the jade spiders run in terror, the thing they thought was waiting for them at the top of the stairs…
Had been slowly dropping in on them from behind all along. Freezing the girls in place by the sheer force of its terrible presence, the gigantic spider had to squeeze through the halls, halls built to accommodate six high school students abreast, and even though it could barely get half of its legs under it, the spider was still hot on their heels, arachnid mandibles snapping with gluttonous desire.
Shana was terrified at even the faintest glimpse of that beast’s reflection.
And yet…
She realized she could breathe easier. She could run faster.
A switch had been flipped.
I sensed the spider. It was me who noticed our greatest danger yet, and I was able to act instead of cowering.
I did it. It’s enough.
“Up here!” Shana called, taking the next turn as sharp as possible to try and throw the spider off, and then flinging open the first classroom door she saw.
Inside was hope. Inside was a small beacon, its faint magenta glow flickering, expectantly awaiting the girls.
“Go, go, go!” Kathryn cried, scrambling forward. Shana, Rae, and Annabelle followed suit, and all four of them touched the lamppost at the same time, exiting Grimoire Academy and landing in a sprawled, desperate heap on a wooden floor.
“Well, that’s one down,” Kathryn said, the first to come up from the heap into a sitting position, flashing a grin. “Just two more to go, right?”
“For me, at least,” Shana said, sitting up and taking deep breaths. “But it’s not just…”
She trailed off. The floor was rocking back and forth with a gentle, off-kilter rhythm. She pushed herself to her feet and found herself gazing out in awe.
The girls had landed in a boat, a simple sailing vessel with one mast and no motor, no rudder, no steering wheel, no oars, no cabin… just the floor, mast, and sail, nothing else. And stretching out all around them, touching the horizon in all directions…
Was an ocean of starlight.
That was the best way Shana could describe it. The ocean was black, but filled with glittering starlight, reflecting a gorgeous, shimmering night sky above. Mixed in with silvery twinkles of stars were wild streaks of blue, purple, and orange, marvelous galactic trails so clear and present in the sky.
“Oh, wow,” Rae said softly, gazing in awe.
“Ah,” came Annabelle’s small voice. She didn’t stand like the others, but sat down, resting her hands on the deck, gazing up at the sky with a melancholy expression.
“This is yours?” Kathryn asked, staring at Annabelle. The small redhead nodded, and Kathryn looked out from the boat again. “Doesn’t look so bad to me.”
“You’ll see,” Annabelle said. She sighed. “But… it’s okay. Nothing bad can happen to us. But we can’t end things early.”
“What do you mean?” Rae asked.
“That’s how this nightmare works,” Annabelle said. “You have to watch all of it. Every single part of it, until it’s done.”
“It’s so beautiful, though,” Kathryn said. “What could be so bad about — hey, wait, right there!” She suddenly pointed, high into the sky. “A star! It just… went out. I think.”
“You’re right,” Rae said, pointing in another direction. “That star just went out, too.”
“Annabelle?” Shana asked, kneeling next to the Princess. “What’s going on here?”
“What we see above and reflected in the ocean isn’t the expanse of space,” Annabelle said. “We’re not seeing stars and planets of the usual kind. Every single star up there is a twinkling representation of a Location in the Enchanted Dominion… or of the Human realm.”
“There’s a single star for the entire Earth and everything else in our galaxy?” Kathryn asked.
“It’s a representation,” Annabelle said. “There are stars you can see from Earth — very, very faintly, but on clear nights you can see them — that are similarly not stars at all, not in the literal sense, but instead mark the Daylight Bastions that are most valuable in defending your realm.”
“Then the stars going out…” Shana started. Her face fell. “Oh. I see.”
“Yes,” Annabelle said softly. “And all we can do is sit here, let the boat carry us… and wait for it to end.”
“End?” Kathryn asked. “You mean… it’s all gonna go dark?”
“Until every star goes out,” Annabelle said, tears glistening in her eyes, “all we can do is wait.”
“But that’s awful,” Rae said. “Even in this trial, there’s no escape?”
“Choosing not to fear this dream never causes it to lose its bite,” Annabelle said. “And it never ends early, no matter what I do. But it will end, without harming us.”
“Guess we just kick back and relax, then,” Kathryn said, but she didn’t have a jovial tune or smile to match as she plopped down on the deck and leaned back against the wall of the boat. “Hey, Annabelle. Do you know which star represents Earth?”
Annabelle pointed, and Shana looked where she indicated, with Kathryn and Rae joining to look as well. There, high in the starry sky, just left of the brightest blue galactic trails, was a star that shone brighter than any others in its immediate vicinity.
“It’s… gonna go out too, huh?” Kathryn asked. Annabelle nodded.
“That’s like… watching the Earth die,” Rae said. “And all we can do is… sit here.”
More stars went out, one by one. It was still hard to make out at first. The smallest, dimmest, most distant stars were winking out into blackness first, scattered so widely that there were no large areas that got cleared out.
But then slightly brighter, slightly larger stars that were close to where the smallest, dimmest stars had been started to wink out. Larger swaths of blackness began to form. The sea, reflecting the light above, grew darker.
All along, the boat rocked gently, slowly, the sail caught on a steady, somber breeze.
“This is… what the Endless Night will do,” Shana said. “Isn’t it?”
Annabelle nodded.
Darkness continued to spread. Brighter and brighter stars were vanishing, swallowed up, devoured by an invisible, insatiable darkness.
Tears ran down Annabelle’s cheeks, reflecting the steadily dwindling starlight.
Shana found herself stunned, too overwhelmed by the enormity of it all to cry. Light — life — being ripped from existence like that, so quickly, so easily, going on, and on, and on…
A blue trail of a galaxy slowly faded, from one end to the other, like someone taking a paintbrush dipped in black paint and rolling slowly across it.
And then it was gone.
Time rolled along, and the girls sat in the boat, staring, silent.
Helpless.
One by one, bit by bit, the light went out of the universe.
Eventually, just one single, solitary star remained. It floated high above them, gleaming brightly, defiantly against the darkness. Shana gazed at it, silently begging it to win, to stay strong, to fight on!
And then, it was gone. No struggle, no glorious battle or heroic last stand.
It just vanished.
And with it, all light went out. The ocean was plunged into darkness. The breeze died, and the boat stopped moving forward, its rocking slowly ceased.
All was dark, and quiet, and still.
Shana had thought so often of evil, of what form it would take, of what atrocities it would commit. She’d spent her whole life so far engrossed in fantasy tales about good versus evil, about heroic battles and great clashes of light and darkness.
She’d seen and read more than a few stories about the end of the world, about evil winning, about what it looked like.
None of it had prepared her for this.
In all the stories there was widespread destruction. It was loud, noisy, violent. There was usually fire and blood, and some evil overlord laughing, standing above it all, wreathed in flames and shadow.
But this…
It was almost — almost — peaceful.
But it couldn’t be peaceful. Because the world felt haunted. Haunted by the innumerable souls that had perished. Haunted by what could have been, what should have been, so many lives and potentials of immeasurable worth…
Gone.
Extinguished. Like blowing out a candle.
An evil that powerful… that cold… that impersonal…
Shana shuddered. This was the end of the world. This was what awaited her, her family, her friends, and everyone else if they failed to stop the Endless Night.
This was the lonely, haunted isolation brought on by the darkness. Quiet, empty, unmoving.
Death. Death without end.
Next to her, Annabelle sniffled. Shana scooted closer and wrapped her arms around her, hugging the girl close. After a few moments, Rae and Kathryn scooted in, joining the hug. None of them could see. But they could hear each other, could feel each other.
If the Endless Night comes… if evil wins…
We won’t even have this. We’ll be a part of the unending, irreversible death.
Shana was the first to look up. The first to notice a faint light that seemed so much brighter against this oppressive darkness. The boat, the boat that wasn’t moving, suddenly bumped gently into a wooden dock. And up on the dock was the next beacon, shining softly in the darkness.
Without another word, the four girls stood and climbed out of the boat. They touched the beacon together, their faces resolute, determined to face their next challenge.