"I got your damn firewood!" Freddy yelled, as he shouldered open the door of the cabin. He unceremoniously dropped the heap in a corner and arched his back until he heard a satisfactory 'pop'. "Hey, Princess!" he yelled, looking around the room. There was a small sofa next to a large fireplace, adjacent to that was a cushy looking armchair, next to the armchair was an end table that held a single lamp and a book. It was the book that caught Freddy's attention. "That wasn't there yesterday." He mused. He stepped forward to look at the book, that's when he noticed the cover: 101 Combative and Protective Spells and reached out to touch the book and his fingers met with smooth leather. He began to trace the intricate designs with his fingertips; they looked to be runes of some sort, all curling spirals and sharp corners, and it seemed the more he looked at it the more runes he could see.
"You can read it if you want." Came a voice from behind him.
"Shit!" Freddy yelled, jumping at the sudden sound. "Ya can't sneak up on a guy like that Miea!"
Miea laughed, "But it's so rewarding to hear you yelp and watch you jump like you just saw a large snake." She replied with a smug grin.
Freddy shivered, he hated snakes, almost as much as he hated the dream people, which kinda made sense, considering the dream people's similarities to the damn things. "Do you want me to read it?" he asked.
"It matters not to me, little nightmare, you are not the best fighter I have encountered thus far, and perhaps if you knew some actual spells you would be more of a challenge." Miea took on a thoughtful look for a moment and then opened the book to a particular section. "Might I suggest you start here?" she said handing freddy the book.
Freddy looked at the page and felt a flicker of annoyance, the pages were covered in the same intricate looking runes that were on the outside of the book. He was about to tell Miea that he couldn't read it when the runes began to move and shift into english letters. "Did you see that?" He asked, utterly astounded.
"The book was originally written in the Necromantic runic system, but most available copies now days have an automatic translation spell on them so when looked at with the intention of reading, the runs shift themselves to be comprehensible to the reader." Miea explained.
"Why not just have different copies in different languages?" Freddy asked.
"Mostly because it's easier to just use duplication a spell on the original and charm the whole lot with one spell, than to translate each one to another language separately." She explained.
Then Freddy remembered something, "What's Necromantic?" he asked, quirking a ridge where his eyebrow once was.
"The language of the dead," Miea said, giving the dream demon a questioning look. "Freddy, you've been dead for about forty five years, shouldn't you know this stuff by now, hell you should even be able to read necromantic."
"The gig didn't really come with a how to book Princess," Freddy said, feeling defensive.
"Necromantic is not a language that can be learned, one simply gains the ability to read and speak it after they die or if you are a daemon you simply grow up speaking and reading it."
"So how come I cant speak it?" asked Freddy, getting annoyed.
"Why indeed..." Miea mused to herself.
"Whatever, I'm gonna go swimming." Freddy said abruptly.
"You swim." said Miea, looking up abruptly at the nightmare.
"Yeah I swim." Said Freddy defensively, as he stormed away. He had no idea why he wanted to go swimming, he had just felt some sort if sudden urge to go toward the lake. When he got there the most breathtaking sight was there to greet him: The setting sun was floating lazily on the horizon and the entire lake looked like it was on fire. At this sight a rhyme from his childhood came back to him, well it wasn't really a rhyme really, his mother used to tell him about hell on a regular basis, Freddy supposed that was because she thought he was headed there from the start. 'Burning in Water, Drowning in Fire.' his mother used to say, 'thats what waits for the souls in hell.' And right now the lake looked like a lake of fire.
While Freddy was admiring his lake of fire, somewhere deep in the forest, something began to stir. Something that had been asleep for quite some time. Something primal and territorial. Something that knew that smell wafting through the trees, that smell of smoke, steel, and... something else, something this thing could not identify, but it was the same smell that came to him sometimes before he would kill. It was the scent he smelled around the teanagers when they were doing something his mother always said was bad and disgusting. Yet it was different somehow, rather than being overpowering it seemed... sweet? Like it was calling to him, it seemed to be under the surface rather than permeating the air. Whatever the other smell was when mixed with the scent of smoke and steel, Jason knew the scent belonged to Freddy Krueger, who, for whatever reason, was back in his camp.