Co-Authored by Ms. Lovett and DrIce

He walked very slowly back to his bed and approached the three objects.

This is too weird. None of my dreams are this realistic.

Being closer to the foot of his bed, he cautiously extended a hand to grab the sword's hilt. When he very nearly touched it, a strong vision struck him:

He was standing in a place permeated with darkness. He couldn't even see his own body. After what seamed like an eternity, but was probably only an instant, he heard a piercing scream, a sickening thud, and then a sword identical to the one in his room seemed to hang in the air in front of him. The blade was unevenly stained crimson with fresh spilt blood, and the sight horrified him. He cried out in protest and found himself back in his room, although he had backed far away from his bed.

"N-no way. No way am I taking the sword" he managed to say, shaking all over. He turned next to that strange wand or staff or whatever it was on the middle of his bed. He approached this item more warily than the sword, and rightfully so! As he watched it, the staff frosted over with ice, glowed red hot, and finally crackled and sparked with arcs of electricity.

"That's some arcane magic stuff! I've read enough to know not to mess with things as powerful as this staff must be. Better not take it."

As he said this, the staff seemed to shimmer for a moment out of focus, and then he lost sight of it, like his eyes were unable to focus on that space.

"This leaves…"

The shield

He put one arm over his face in a futile attempt at protection as he reaches out with a finger and pokes the last item left. When his finger makes contact with the cold, smooth, metallic surface a noise like a loud gong sounds and he shivers. A gleam of light runs over the shield from an unknown source.

Hmmm, the lights are still out. Where'd that come from?!

He is struck suddenly by a thought so alien and strange it couldn't have been his own:

Gather your things and leave… before you too fade…

"Huh? Fade what?!"

Nevertheless, he found himself grabbing his red speaker-backpack and filling it with supplies in a trance-like state. He had gathered 3 changes of clothes and an extra pair of sturdy boots without even realizing it. Curiously, he grabbed his personal music player and had a deep-seated feeling that it was going to be important, and not to forget it.

Wonder if it even works. It should, it runs on batteries.

He hooked it up to his backpack and turned the built-in speakers to a low level. He had not pressed play or even selected a song when one immediately started issuing, loudly. The strange part was that it played one or two lines of a song, and then shuffled to another. It didn't even start at the beginning of each song either. It was completely random, or so he thought:

"We were made to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves?"

"It was an honest mistake"

"It's just one of those days"

"Lost sight of all you ever dreamed of, the forces swept you away"

"Hey there, I know it's hard to feel"

"I feel it; this tension inside of me, pressure is presently pushin' down on me"

"Is it worth it? Can you even hear me?"

"I wonder why I never wonder why"

"I just need to re-align"

"Be other-worldly, count your blessings"

"It's the reason, why I'm here"

"I've spent too much time alone; I've got to find some place to go"

"I took a walk to ease my troubled mind"

"I know it feels like we're never coming back"

"What is this world that we see…Today, where do we go from here, without fear, without harmony?"

Finally, the strange musical episode ended as abruptly as it had started.

"Waaaay too messed up for words, like someone or something is trying to talk to me through my music! Better grab some extra batteries for this thing then."

He knew he was alone in the house but the total quiet unnerved him. IT seemed like the whole world just stopped. After grabbing his backpack and filling it the rest of the way with food and snacks, he set it by the front door. He bounded back to his room to grab the shield and study it more closely.

Before, it had seemed lustrous and shiny. Now, it was a bit dull. He hefted it in his hands and it felt as if it was the most natural thing, like he was born to hold it. He went to look in a mirror and fix his hair, and realized he was still in his pajamas. "Ugh, gotta change before I leave. Somethin tells me I better get going soon"

He sprinted back to his room, tore off his pajamas and threw on whatever was in his closet. Curiously, he didn't remember having these particular items of clothing before. The pants he found for himself were baggy black cargoes with lots of pockets and loops of chain holding them closed. The shirt just a regular long-sleeved T, but it was in such a stunning blue it almost hypnotized him. Somewhere deep in his mind he knew it matched his eye color perfectly, but he didn't dwell on it.

"These will do. Time to leave."

He grabbed his backpack and buckled the shield on his right arm, and stepped outside. A sense of loneliness and dread filled him, like he was the last survivor of some forgotten Apocalypse. Shaking off this notion he randomly started walking in the direction of his school where he would have gone today anyway, had this been any other normal day.

"Maybe someone else is there to tell me what's going on." His voice had a hollow echo-ish quality to it, which unnerved him again. It was like the very air itself was different.

Not far down the street he saw a few downed streetlights and in the distance, some seemingly abandoned cars. Hugging the shield closer to him, he approached the nearest car. A thick palpable darkness seethed and writhed in the "empty" car. Against his gut feeling, he pressed his face to the window glass to try and see inside, when something thumped hard against the window, almost sending him sprawling backwards. Next, a pair of animal yellow eyes somehow defined themselves out of the darkness. The eyes met his gaze for an instant, and then the window glass shattered and out poured these things! With the fluid motion of liquid shadows, the eyes and darkness squeezed out of the car and formed into little nightmare creatures. They might have been almost cute looking had it not been for the terrifying circumstances. They had ant-like qualities, waving their antennae around and swarming together with seemingly one mind.

"Aaaaaah! Nooooo!" He raised his shield, but the creatures were undeterred. They swarmed around him and enveloped him in a thick cloud of darkness.

Weakly he cried out, but couldn't even hear his own voice. The darkness seemed to cover his mouth and nose, and he found it difficult to breathe. The dark was everywhere and he was deathly afraid. The last thing he remembered was a single tiny point of light cutting through the darkness in front of him, but then he could hold out no longer. He blacked out completely.