The dark horse with flowing purple hair stared down at her menacingly. Frey froze. This was the monster. The monster that was making those noises, scaring the townsfolk. The strongest monster in the dungeon- far stronger than even the four minotaurs that had ambushed them. Frey swallowed hard. Forte and Margaret, who flanked her sides, froze at the same time.
The monster charged.
Frey stepped to the right, unleashing several fireballs as Margaret followed suit with her harp. Forte ran to the left and stabbed at the monster repeatedly with her spear. But the monster was not deterred, it leapt and pranced, trying to kick out at the three of them.
"Urgh…!" Forte grunted in pain, loudly, when one of the monster's hoofs struck her, sending her stumbling. Dizzy, she backed away slowly, but the monster was already tearing at her.
"Oh no you don't-" Frey changed tactics and fired a shockwave at the monster- it successfully deviated his concentration. The only problem now, was that it was charging in her direction. Frey screamed and ran out of its way, sending shockwaves towards him repeatedly. Meg ducked and attacked with her rod. Forte gathered her bearings and lunged hard with her lance-
It worked. The monster was going down. It fell upon its knees, shaking and screaming. Frey stopped mid-run, exhausted. Forte and Meg panted hard beside her, looking worse-for-the-wear with their bruises and torn clothes respectively. Frey winced from the large cut in her left arm.
"We have him!" Forte shouted in triumph, standing before the falling monster, relieved and exhilarated. Meg whooped cheerfully beside her, trying to balance herself with her rod. Frey smiled, feeling tired, wanting to fall asleep right there and then…
But the monster was getting up. Slowly but surely, on its front two legs first, then back two. Frey's eyes widened in horror. Meg and Forte were too close to it. Far too close.
"GET AWAY…!" Too late. The monster screamed in rage and called forth beams of thunder, all pinpointed at Forte. Forte screamed in pain when thousands of bolts hit her, slamming her into a wall and leaving her hidden behind a cloud of dust and debris. Meg was next. The monster pivoted and charged at her- she never stood a chance in the midst of the shocking blue thunder.
"No." Frey whispered, willing her legs to move. "No. No. NO-" Her eyes frantically searched for the bodies of her comrades.
Forte's body lay in the middle of a pile of debris, wounds bleeding some areas, bruises tattooing her whole body.
Margaret looked worse off- her hair was singed, and most of her skin was charred black.
"MEG! FORTE!" Frey screamed, scrambling to unearth her bottles of recovery potion. She only had two left. She had to get it to the both of them or-
The ground suddenly shook. The monster was coming, this time, for her. Frey tried to run in the direction of Forte, but the monster's giant hoofs intercepted her. She turned and hightailed for Meg- But the monster's tail swept in and knocked her away.
Frey struggled to surface under the debris. Her medicine lay in shattered pieces- a puddle of fading green liquid that served no purpose now. The monster stepped up to her, excruciatingly slowly. There was something almost human in his eyes, that was relishing in the hurt he had dealt them. Frey froze. Her body wouldn't move- Ah. Her legs were pinned under that giant rock. No escape. Nothing. The monster would kill her, the same way he ended Margaret and Forte's life. She, the princess of Selphia, had failed them. She deserved to die.
Frey closed her eyes just as a gigantic bolt of blue thunder headed her way…
"ARGH…!" Frey screamed and fell out of her bed.
Again. That nightmare again. Ever since returning from the Water Ruins, she hadn't had a moment of rest. Her dreams were laced with fear, haunted by nightmares of the battle that nearly took her life. Even fighting Ambrosia didn't come close. Even the four minotaurs did not fuel such fear.
It was 6.00 pm. Frey shook her head, wiping away beads of perspiration. Mr Volkanon had insisted she take a nap, after seeing how dark the shadows under her eyes were. Frey had contended, too tired to argue. But it didn't seem as if she could get any rest now. Contemplating getting herself a cup of hot milk, she suddenly heard a knock on her door.
"Come in," Frey called out uncertainly. True, many people came into her room to visit sometimes, but rarely (or rather, none of them) were so formal and polite- even Forte herself. Still, she half-expects it to be one of her best friends, either the serious and stoic Forte, or the willowy and graceful Margaret, since they were her room's most common visitors, after all.
She nearly falls out of her bed again when it's Dylas she saw.
"D-Dylas?!" Frey yelped, surprised. Dylas looked uncomfortable, as he edged closer to where the princess sat on the floor.
"Hi." He mumbled softly. Frey smiled back, vaguely conscious of how untidy she must look after surfacing from her interrupted sleep.
"What… What are you doing on the floor?" He asked. Frey froze. Somehow, hearing his voice at such a close range seemed like an unconscious reminder of how Dylas was the monster who attacked her-
"It was the Water Ruins again, wasn't it?" Dylas whispered. Frey flinched, trying to clear the treacherous thoughts in her mind, and erase the fear from her eyes.
"No, that's not it," She babbled frantically. It's been some time, two weeks or so, since the rescuing of Dylas from the Water Ruins. He's more or less gotten used to the town by now, and the two of them did grow closer in its aftermath.
But that didn't mean any of her nightmares had faded, or gotten any less vivid. Frey's ashamed to admit there were times that she tried to avoid the tall bluenette when the familiar fear started suffocating her. Frey also doesn't want to admit it, but she wonders if the battle at Water Ruins has managed to scar her so badly that there's always a lingering sense of fear when she talked to Dylas. Dylas was already cold and distant enough, without counting how the villagers treated him. He had just started opening up to Frey, and if he knew how much she actually feared him at times-
"You've been having nightmares about Thunderbolt. About me."
Frey froze.
Thunderbolt. That was its name, Dylas said. She'd never bothered to use it. Naming her nightmare and fears was not something she wanted to do in particular. Sometimes, she wondered if the man went as far as to name the monster and himself specfically, so as to separate him from the beast that tried to kill her.
"How long has it been?" There was no point playing dumb now. Frey's greenish-grey eyes dulled, and she hugged her knees to herself. She knew Dylas was aware that she sometimes dreamt badly of the events that led to his return, but he had never known how serious it had been. She never let him.
"Ever since I got back. Every time I try to sleep." She whispered. Dylas' eyes widened at her words, and something in his eyes stirred. Quietly, he offered his hand to Frey, and the latter took it gratefully. But the moment they touched, and she looked at him, she's reminded of the startling horror when the monster stared down at her with its beady eyes, and when she recognised the almost human-like sneer as it reared its hoofs to attack...
"I'm sorry!" The princess blurted out, her fingers darting away from Dylas' palm. "But the nightmares are so vivid and I can't sleep and sometimes I'm just so scared-" She's babbling again, hoping the words would ward away the suffocating fear once more. But they're of no use.
She remembered the pain of thunder, shocking every bone in her body, burning so deep that she had scars that would never fade- both physically and emotionally. She remembered the guilt in her heart when Forte and Meg got knocked out- how Jones admitted in a soft whisper that should she have been any later, they would not have made it. She remembered how many times the thunder hit her, until even the debris pinning her legs shattered and she was free to unleash one last shockwave before she nearly collapsed- how she got to Dylas', Forte and Meg's body, through some inconceivable method, and screamed the word 'home' weakly as she mumbled the spell that would bring them back to Selphia. She remembered never daring to go near the Water Ruins again, remembered flinching at the sight of Dylas' from afar, from the sound of thunder when typhoons came.
The nightmares reminded her all the time, after all.
Frey seats herself on her bed, bracing herself for Dylas' harsh reproach. The latter slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out something- for a while, Frey almost thought he would throw it at her. Instead, Dylas stood in front of Frey, a curious, webbed contraption splayed on his palm. The hoop was a shade of pale green, attached with feathers and beads that rattled comfortingly when they touched.
"This is a dreamcatcher. Doug mentioned them, and Arthur told me that they were for nightmares." Dylas admitted, his face slightly flushed.
"H… Hang it above your bed. Arthur said the Native Americans believed that a dream catcher would change a person's dreams. Only good dreams would be allowed to pass through- they would slide down the dreamcatcher's feathers towards the sleeper. Bad dreams would stay in the net and disappear when daylight comes." It's the longest speech Frey had heard Dylas make ever since their meeting, and she stared at him in wide-eyed surprise.
Dylas flushed bright red.
"J-just take it. I hope your nightmares stop soon…!" With that, Dylas turned and stampeded out the door in a flustered haze, leaving Frey blinking in surprise.
Slowly, Frey lifted up the pale mint-tinted dreamcatcher and attached it carefully above her bed. She was wrong. The monster in Thunderbolt was not Dylas, and even if it had been, he had obviously changed. A monster who wanted to kill her wouldn't have gone through so much to erase her nightmares. A monster wouldn't care like Dylas did. Tomorrow… Tomorrow, she'd apologise, and start anew their friendship.
Suddenly tired, Frey lay down on her bed again and slowly drifted off to sleep.
For the first time in ages, her dreams were sweet, and a smile curled against her lips when a man with light blue hair and black markings on his face appeared within them.
(She tells Dylas the day after that the dreamcatcher worked, and that her dreams were now sweet. She can't quite make sense of why he got flustered when she told him he appeared in those dreams).