Author's Note: In case anyone missed it, No Story Stands Alone got something completely unrelated to any of this. If you've ever wondered about what's happening back on Berk, go check it out! Now, on with your regularly scheduled story.

The next morning, Lily was once again forced to awkwardly endure Beryl bringing her water and then spitting it at her. There had to be a better way to do something like this, but apparently neither of them had thought of anything. So, after some water and another meal of fresh-caught cave fish – that, at least, was not a problem – they began the long spiraling trek back up to the split in the tunnel.

"So... " Beryl began after a long bout of companionable silence. "Ivy."

"Yes..?" She had thought them done talking about him.

"It's kind of funny. I always thought Pearl was right about him being a cowardly, irrelevant male waste of space. I am having a hard time believing he could hide the ability to threaten and kill an alpha from his own daughter." Beryl looked back at her. "Not that I am doubting your word, I am just wondering."

"He was cowardly," she replied, "and Diora scared him more than anything. I am not at all surprised Pearl did not know he was just as bad as Diora in his own way." He hadn't had the opportunity to be.

A short while later, Lily followed Beryl out into the place where the tunnel split. She felt like it had taken much longer to go down. Probably because on the way down they were slowly dying of thirst.

Of course, even reenergized, full, and fully watered, Lily did not look forward to the vertical ascent they were about to make. "I could do without the obstacle courses these tunnels all seem to have somewhere." This vertical shaft looked very, very difficult to traverse on paw. Not impossible, not even as difficult as the last vertical ascent she had attempted, but definitely not fun or safe either.

Beryl followed her gaze upward. "This is going to be fun," he groaned.

"You have an odd definition of fun." She jumped up to the obvious first ledge, mentally estimating how long this was going to take. 'Too long' was the only answer she could come up with.

O-O-O-O-O

A very long time later, Lily reached the top of the vertical shaft. She didn't look down; even if she could fly, that drop would seriously injure or kill her. She was just glad to be done with the ascent. The tunnel continued on-

She whined under her breath. "You have to be kidding."

"I didn't say anything," Beryl quipped, leaping up behind her. "Tell me it doesn't go up any further."

"The opposite." She hated backtracking, and this felt very much like that, because the tunnel went for all of ten paces before beginning a steep, if not vertical, descent. They had gone up only to go right back down again.

"Nothing to do but-"

"Keep going, I know." She missed large, open spaces that were nice and hospitable, with a dozen different exits that all led to different places. This stupid tunnel system seemed designed to be annoying enough to tire them while offering just enough hope that they wouldn't turn around and give up.

O-O-O-O-O

It was very, very hard to judge vertical distances under the ground. If Lily had to guess, she would say she and Beryl had descended further than the bottom of the vertical shaft. By now they were going down into the depths the river cavern had been at. Maybe this entire path just led there. Hopefully in a way that meant she could safely descend and come back if necessary.

"How much longer do you want to go before resting?" Beryl called back. He was a few dozen paces ahead, for no particular reason.

Lily sighed, trying to find something to distract herself with. Anything at all. "A while yet."

Beryl shrugged his wings and continued on.

There was something. Lily let herself admire his tail and hindquarters. She had made herself put away all thoughts of intimacy for the time being, given just how much rebuilding of trust she still had to do thanks to her temporary – hopefully temporary, otherwise she was doomed – bout of insanity, but there was no harm in looking. Besides, he was as close to perfect as could be in those areas. It would be a shame not to admire him.

As if sensing her gaze, Beryl stopped and turned around. "Not now?"

"What? Oh, stopping. No, not yet. Unless you think it is time to stop and sleep." She certainly trusted his judgment over her own when it came to that, even if her body seemed to be fully adhering to the schedule he had set for her, at least to the extent of feeling tired at the right times. Even if she couldn't sleep on her own yet.

"Not quite, I just did not want to assume we were both equally tired right now." He turned back to the path ahead of them and unknowingly allowed her to continue distracting herself. She needed the distraction; her back was a constant pain, as always. It was worse now, for no apparent reason. The pain came and went, always in the same four points.

"And you are saying I would tire first?" Lily called out half-heartedly, belatedly realizing what he had implied. "You'd be right, but I resent you saying it."

"I only implied it," Beryl wryly retorted. "You said it."

"Fine, but we were both thinking it anyway." She was arguing against herself now, but that was part of the fun of it. "I am weaker than you by far, so it only makes sense."

"You are not weaker, per se…" Beryl tried, before trailing off.

"Physically, I definitely am." That was an obvious fact. He couldn't refute it.

"What's with the sudden self-depreciation streak?" He sounded genuinely worried.

"I'm tired and saying anything that comes to mind in order to keep myself moving." She decided to go out on a limb. "If I am being honest, watching your backside is more distracting, but every little bit helps."

Beryl didn't even react to that, acting as if he hadn't heard, though Lily knew he had. His pace quickened a little bit, a sign that he was conscious of her watching.

Then he slowed to a stop, looking around. The path in front of him was gloomy and dark, to the point where she couldn't tell if there was a path or if the tunnel just stopped a little bit further on.

Lily felt a rush of pure dread. This had better not actually be a real dead end. They would have to go all the way back if it was, and she didn't want to have to–

"Oh, here we go," Beryl rumbled, slipping through a shadowy opening in the side of the tunnel that Lily hadn't seen. "I feel a breeze from this way," he called out from beyond the opening. "And… now I see why."

Lily followed him in, wrinkling her nose. "What is that foul smell?"

"I don't know, but I can guess," he rumbled. "Come look at this."

Lily ambled up beside him and beheld something ominous and new.

She and Beryl had come out onto a raised plateau set against a stone wall. They were at the beginning of a long, wide chamber with a high ceiling and what looked like a twisted stone maze of tall spires and stalagmites populating the floor. It was akin to the rainy cavern, except without the rain or the mushrooms, and with pillars interspersed among the stalagmites.

All of that was secondary to the true defining features of this cavern. The smell's source was now apparent, slowly swirling through the passages of the natural maze, faintly visible in the light of the few dark yellow crystals dotted around. A sickly green fog clung to the ground, pooling in small depressions and flowing and swirling anywhere from paw to head height. Where they were standing was high enough to avoid it all, but if they wanted to keep going, they would have to pass through it.

That was not an appealing prospect, especially since the plateau they were on was a sheer outcropping, one she would not be able to ascend once she had jumped down. Once again, to go any further would be to lose the ability to backtrack.

"There is absolutely no way either of us is going into that," Beryl asserted worriedly. "It looks dangerous."

"I don't plan on getting any closer," she agreed. She did wonder what the fog might do to her if she inhaled any of it, but she certainly wasn't about to find out. It wasn't worth the risk, even if the alternative was backtracking all the way up and down again, and then all the way through to-

There was a faint scuttling sound in the foggy green depths of the maze. Lily shuddered. "We need to get out of here." All of her senses were screaming 'danger' at her, and she was done ignoring them. She and Beryl had stumbled across something they did not want to find, something like the spider-crabs, and this time it might be more dangerous–

"Why not stay?" a new voice hissed in her ear, an instant before she felt herself being forcefully shoved off the edge of the outcropping by a hard shape. She twisted around a heartbeat too late, the dark opening flashing past too quickly to even catch a glimpse of her attacker as she fell.

She landed on all four paws, but collapsed with a whine as soon as the pain from the impact registered in her back, trying and failing to hold in the little air she had in her body. Green fog passed in and then out of her nostrils right before her eyes, disturbing the slow, steady current of the fog immediately around her.

"Lily!" Beryl called as he ran to her, also breathing it. "Let me boost you up!" He crouched by the plateau's sheer side.

"What hit us?" She was more concerned with the dragon or creature that had knocked them off, as she had already inhaled some of the fog. It was not immediately harming her, while her attacker definitely could. Besides which, even standing on Beryl's back, she wouldn't be able to reach the top of the outcropping, as she had only moments ago determined.

"I have absolutely no idea," Beryl said tensely, his gaze darting around even as he spoke. "It was big, fast, and as black as I am, from what I saw. We will see it coming, but not by much in this fog."

Lily began to feel very, very exposed. "This feels like a trap," she hissed. The fog was swirling faster now, as if sensing there was prey about somewhere. A faint hissing filled the air.

She spun as movement caught her eye, and then something large and dripping blood loomed out of the green fog behind Beryl, a horrifying maw of bone and raw flesh with glowing red eyes. She shrieked and fired at it–

But the bolt passed right through it, and it leered at her before retreating into the depths.

"What?" Beryl yelped, leaping up and spinning around, a shot building in the back of his throat. "I don't see anything. Did you kill it?"

Lily heard a faint grumbling sound off to Beryl's right, followed by a soft whine. "I think I hurt it, but Beryl, that was not – I don't know what it was!"

"Whatever it was, It can still probably be driven off." he gestured for her to go around him. "I come in from the left, you from the right, and…" He trailed off, tilting his head. "What was that?"

"What?" She didn't hear anything.

"That false roar…" Beryl's eyes widened. "Lily, what, exactly, did you see? Was it a large, dark No-scaled-not-prey?"

"No, nothing like that." She was about to explain when she heard a soft whisper too faint to make out individual words. The voice was tauntingly familiar but indistinct at the same time. "There is someone out there."

"We know that." Beryl was looking distinctly unnerved. "Let's go after the one you hurt and get some answers about what's going on."

"I don't think that thing could give any," Lily quavered, not even caring that she was acting like a frightened fledgling, "but okay." She stalked away from his side, only going far enough for Beryl's form to become a silhouette, and no further. They crept forward together.

Then a dark shape darted right in front of Lily. She shrieked and fell back, but nothing happened. She hadn't even seen what the shape might be.

"Lily?!" Beryl's voice was close, but not getting closer. "Lily?" Getting further away, now.

"Beryl?" Lily stood, looking around frantically. She was still in the green fog, but now there were rocks around her, blocking her path in all directions. Had she fallen into a pit? "I'm this way, Beryl!"

An instant later, the ground beneath Lily's paws began to collapse, chunks of perilously thin stone falling into an endless black pit. She clambered across the crumbling rock and leaped up to try and get on top of one of the stones surrounding her, but overshot and landed–

On the ground, with no stones around her at all. She should have hit her target and scrabbled atop, not landed on the clear ground!

"Lily," a pained female voice called out from somewhere in the distance. "Please, let me out."

Lily froze, her heart racing, as she tried to make sense of that. There was no way…

A four-legged shape with a drooping head and a long tail crawled up out of the green fog, leaving a trail of waste and blood behind. "Please," Holly begged, her eyes glassy and dull. There were deep gashes in her neck, oozing a stream of blood, and she was coated in waste, thick and dripping from every part of her. The smell...

She couldn't be real. That was over; it had happened long ago. But Lily had never seen Holly get out of the waste pit for good… Everything she knew past that time was from Beryl.

"He lied," the wretched, suffering light wing in front of Lily groaned. "You were out of control. I was in there for days, only for you to slit my throat."

"Then… how are you here?" Lily all but whimpered. It couldn't be, that couldn't be true. It didn't seem right, but the evidence in front of her face said otherwise, literally… Though how she had known to say that...

Instead of answering, Holly began heaving, spewing more waste from her throat, and her body crumpled like an empty skin, leaving nothing behind but a noxious puddle.

"Lily!" Beryl's voice cut through her rising horror like a sharp claw. He was close again. "Lily, none of this-"

"Do not bother," the voice from before hissed, and Beryl yelped.

Something was wrong. Something besides the horrible things happening all around her. Lily walked forward, skirting around the puddle Holly had left behind, toward Beryl's voice.

Rocks loomed all around her, large and jagged. She kept going, heedless of the now faint and irrelevant aching in her back and paws. She felt like she could run for days on end, if only she could find Beryl and get away from this horrible-

"Lily," crooned a dark and cruel voice from the most horrible nightmares of her past. "My favorite."

Lily yelped and pushed herself to run even harder, knowing in the back of her mind what was catching up to her and dreading it with every fiber of her being. She knew that voice.

Claw was there, limping along beside her, keeping up despite his slow, irregular gait. One of his eyes was nothing but a black, empty void that seemed to watch her just as easily, and there were bloody gashes all over him, but he was moving, more than keeping pace despite the bones protruding from his legs, coming after her with a leer that spoke more to his intentions than words ever could.

She whimpered and tried to block him out, dodging between looming rock formations as fast as she could. She looked back only once, but Claw was right behind her, and gaining. She strained to move faster, but his labored breathing was audible behind her. He was going to catch her, and then he was going to do whatever he wanted, everything she had suffered for moon-cycles so long ago. This was impossible but it was happening anyway. Claw was dead!

"Lil-" Beryl barked, suddenly looming out of the fog like all of the rocks around them and cut off as she slammed into him. She scrambled to her paws and darted around behind him, hoping he could hold Claw off long enough for her to get a shot out.

"Lily!" Beryl looked around worriedly as he put his tail on her side to reassure her. "What is chasing you?"

"Claw," she whimpered. He hadn't chased her to Beryl, but that just meant he was somewhere around here.

"Claw." Beryl didn't seem all that surprised. "Lily, there are two things that could be going on here." His voice was strained, and it was clear he was nowhere near as calm as he seemed. "I have seen dead No-scaled-not-prey, and dragons too. That's not possible."

"Enough of this," the voice hissed, and four different shadows coalesced into being around Beryl and Lily. A strange black dragon, Claw, Grimmel, and a Deathgripper all emerged and aimed their various methods of death at Beryl.

Lily took a step back, driving away the fear in a split second of anger and courage. Beryl didn't even seem to see them, staring in the direction of the Deathgripper with no sign of recognition.

Grimmel hefted a jagged, red-stained false claw. The Deathgripper reared back, flashing its oversized talons. The odd black dragon with long fangs lurched forward, and Claw leaped for Lily herself, ignoring Beryl.

She fired at Claw and leaped to the side, hoping to get Grimmel before–

Beryl howled in pain as the large black dragon's long fangs sank into his wing shoulder from above. He stilled almost immediately, collapsing where he stood.

Lily watched in horror, everything else forgotten, as the horrific black dragon leered at her, pulled its green-stained fangs out of Beryl, and spoke.

"Always the weak ones that never understand in time. I will come back for you."

Then it began to drag Beryl away. She howled in denial and fired, but the strange black dragon simply shrugged her blast off with its wings, easily ignoring the scorching explosion. It disappeared into the green fog, and Beryl disappeared with it.

Lily didn't know what to do, or what was going on, and as she cast about in the fog, looking for Beryl, she almost despaired. He was gone, everything horrible that could happen was happening, she wanted to find a hidden corner, curl up, and hide until it was all over–

But as much as she wanted to do that, there was something equally terrifying about giving up, about giving Beryl up. He couldn't be dead, she didn't want to believe it. If Claw was not dead after what her pack had done to him, there she didn't want to believe that Beryl was any less alive. Such nonsensical reasoning rang false in her mind even as she came up with it, but it was all she had, and she clung to it. She was in a horrible place where nothing made sense, her hope didn't have to make sense either.

Claw stumbled out from a whirl of fog to her right, startling her once more. "You only ever had one real mate," he hummed maliciously. "Let me show you…" Blood ran from his empty eye socket, dripping into the mist, and he lifted one of his hind legs in anticipation, showing her something she outright refused to look at. "Roll over."

Lily inhaled and hurriedly blasted at Claw, but her shot went right through him, just as it had before. He laughed scornfully.

Something was not right. She shook her head, hating that the green mist obscured everything. She could barely think with how terrified she was, and Claw was now impervious to her fire. This was her…

Worst nightmare. It was a nightmare. But none of this was a dream. It was real. Beryl had been bitten and abducted by a real dragon, one she had never seen the likes of.

She managed to ignore whatever vile taunt Claw was spouting, taking the vital moments he was giving her to think. Of everything she had seen clearly, everyone who seemed to be here despite it being impossible, only one creature was new.

Claw, Holly, Grimmel, a Deathgripper. All horrors from her past, whether enemies or past mistakes. Things she feared. But the black dragon who had taken Beryl was new, she would remember a dark creature with fangs tinted a sickly green…

Green like the fog, and Beryl had dropped immediately. She was no stranger to substances doing things to the body or mind, so she leaped on the obvious conclusion almost immediately. It made sense that this was all an induced hallucination, trickery spread by air that took in anyone who inhaled it.

Believing it was another matter entirely. She stared at the horrid image of Claw in front of her, desperately looking for an obvious imperfection. If this was not real, why did it seem so realistic?

Claw took a threatening step forward, his good eye glinting in-

No light. There was no light, but his eye seemed to be reflecting something. The moment she noticed it the glint disappeared, but there was no taking back the realization. It wasn't real.

Lily snarled angrily at the persistent image of Claw, remembering what the dragon who had taken Beryl had said to her. Always the weak that never understood in time. But she did understand. She understood, and she rejected it. She was not one for fantasy. Not even a horrid, twisted fantasy like this, Claw back from the dead to reclaim her. She only cared for reality, what was and what could realistically be, and Claw counted towards neither of those.

"You are dead," she snarled scornfully, hoping his image would disappear.

"Not too dead to mate you," he growled with an over the top leer. She could see that he was anticipating just that, visibly excited and slinking towards her.

She quivered in fear despite knowing that it was not real. She could smell, see, hear… If he touched her, she might think she felt it, and that would be as torturous as if it was real. There had to be a solution, a way to make it all go away, but she didn't know what it was.

Whatever it was, she would not find it by fleeing, and she needed to save Beryl if he still lived. She had been willing in the past to suffer Claw's attention if it got her closer to her goals, to helping others be free of him. But she didn't know if she could do it again, even in passing…

To stay here and cower was to let Claw win, so she had to try. She took a step forward and defiantly bared her teeth. "I do not fantasize, and if I did you would be the last one that came to mind," she growled, if a little shakily. "Go back to being dead, it suited you better."

Claw stopped just short of touching her; she could feel his hot and fetid breath on her face, or at least she thought she could. "You are mine. I took your flight. I took your freedom. I-"

"Freak." She pushed right through him, intending to shove him aside only to stumble through his body as if walking through the fog and nothing more, which of course she was. None of this was real and she knew for sure now, none of it except Beryl… and whatever had dragged him away.

Beryl's kidnapper was real, and the swirling gaps in the fog that he had left behind were too, a path made of absence, lingering for the time being. An intermittent line, something she could follow.

Three more Claws lurked in the depths of the green fog, all three blocking the path she could see. She could not prevent a deep and heartfelt groan of disgust and fear, but she knew they were not real.

This was not real. Almost all of this was in her head, somehow a product of her memories and this green fog. That was the key, the trick, what the black dragon had stopped Beryl from explaining at least twice, now that Lily knew what was going on and understood why it kept interrupting him.

Maybe she was the weak one; she had figured it out far later than Beryl. But maybe that was just because she had far more to fear than he did, or because he was far more accustomed to the fantastic and unreal.

Lily followed the swirling trail through the fog, moving as swiftly as she could without making noise. After a moment to think as clearly as she could manage with her heart trying to break through her chest and out into the open, she paused and flamed herself, reducing her form to a shimmering gap in the fog topped by a grey patch of scar tissue. She was still very visible in these conditions, but much less so than normal.

Ivy, his chest noticeably not moving, stepped into her way; she shoved right past him, only to see him glaring at her from another thick patch of fog to her right.

"Poisoner," he called out breathlessly.

She didn't respond. The dragon she was trailing would hear her, none of these other horrors were real.

That conviction became much harder to hold once she began walking past corpses. Light wing bodies were piled in head-high heaps to either side of the path through the fog, bodies that had been ravaged and shredded but somehow remained just recognizable enough that she would be able to identify them if she stopped to check.

She forced herself to ignore them. If she kept moving, they would go away. They weren't really there, just a distraction, if one that played on her deepest fears and regrets. She tried to keep her ears open for the sounds of a body being dragged–

Only to be foiled by a familiar voice. "You tortured me, Lily," Holly said in a smug, bragging tone of voice, stepping out from behind a larger than average pile of bodies. This time, the bloody, gaping wound in her neck was joined by a multitude of cuts and scratches all over her body, scales smeared with blood. "Now I am alpha. I led them all to their deaths just to spite you."

Lily almost laughed. Holly was many things, but-

"We are alike in our failings," Holly hissed. "We were both betrayed, and I reacted no better than you, no better than our dear Sire..."

That struck a little closer to home. She tried to shut Holly out of her mind like she had everything else, and in a fit of defiant courage closed her eyes, blocking out the apparition. When she opened them again, Holly was gone.

Then a new voice drifted through the mist, one Lily recognized as her quarry, and she listened warily, knowing to doubt her ears.

"Black scales, black skin. Different taste? Light and dark, different flavors. Black like me. I wonder what I taste like. Maybe this is close."

She had to shudder at that, somewhat convinced that what she was hearing was real as it was not scary so much as disturbing. Very disturbing.

"Living meat is best, living and scared to inaction," the voice narrated to itself, lilting unsteadily at the oddest times. "Limbs first, then body, then head." A low growl growl interrupted the rant, though it sounded like it came from the same dragon, and the voice quickly returned. "Must wait for it to wake, food is best when it screams."

Lily slowed down, aware that she had to be close, and tried not to think about how sure the dragon sounded about that, like it spoke from experience. She crept behind a stone pillar that was close to the voice, after checking with her paw to be sure it was solid and thus real. In the distance two Deathgrippers were flying toward her, but she ignored them with relative ease, leaning around the pillar to finally lay eyes on the new and nightmare-inducing dragon for more than a terrified instant.

It vaguely resembled a light wing in body structure, but was much taller, thinner and spindly where her kind was rounded and filled out. It hunched over on its hind legs, a black skeletal tail balancing it as it used the long talons on its front paws to stroke the two green-stained fangs protruding from a thin and angular muzzle.

What interested Lily, aside from the rapid but steady rise and fall of Beryl's chest as he lay nearby, was the new dragon's wings. They were reflective, looking like the same kind of shiny stone No-scaled-not-prey used for false claws. If she had to guess, she would say that what she saw was merely a mobile covering for this thing's true wings, because there was no way those elongated half-oval domes that shifted every few seconds were capable of providing flight.

The black dragon ran its talons up and down its fangs a little faster as Beryl stirred. "Old, I am. A full strike, so easily recovered from. No matter, my fog does most of the work." A small bead of dark green liquid began to form on the tip of one of the fangs, one the dragon carefully flicked off before vaporizing it in midair with a tiny blast of smoking yellow fire so weak Lily wasn't sure she had seen it. A little green puff spread out from where the fire had been, trailing down Beryl's twitching wing to join the swirling vapours drifting over the ground.

Lily thought to worry about what such potent venom would do to Beryl, coursing through his body instead of spreading in the air, but quickly dismissed the fear as irrelevant. Whatever it did, it couldn't be worse than what this dragon would do if left to his own devices. She did her best to ignore the leering light wing fledglings crowding around Beryl and making as if to claw at him, dripping blood that never seemed to stay where it should. Every time she blinked the pooled blood was gone, only to be replaced, so she was easily able to discern how unreal that weirdly generic fear was.

A far more relevant fear was the creeping dread she felt when she contemplated saving Beryl, and her very limited options for doing so. This dragon had a shield, of sorts, fire, and his own kind of poison, one that was currently distracting and terrifying her even though she knew it was making her see and hear things that did not exist. This was not a fight she could win. There were few physical fights she could win in any case, so that shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was her only option. He wasn't just going to leave Beryl alone to be revived, if Beryl could even wake up given his current state.

She stiffened as the dark dragon leaned forward and sniffed Beryl's tail. "Maybe a bite now…" he hissed to himself.

Beryl had already lost one tailfin in his life, and she was not about to sit by while he lost another. The dancing black scrap of bloody membrane that fell right in front of her from above only served to spur her on. She rose from her crouch, intent on-

The black dragon tensed, looking over to the right. "No new prey from there in a long time. Light wing will still be fighting off her fears." He caressed his fangs carefully. "Kill her, I think. Not enough venom, not for a while yet. Dead meat is better than no meat, even if live and screaming meat is best."

With that, the strange and horrible black dragon left Beryl's body, stalking off into the fog to his right. Lily held her breath until he was gone, unwilling to risk ruining her stroke of good fortune with a loud, misplaced sigh of relief. He was going after her. It would not be long before he realized she was not fighting her worst fears as gullibly as he believed.

The moment she was sure he was gone she rushed over to Beryl, not so much as flinching as three different black dragons sprung at her from three different directions. She had almost expected that; whenever she thought of something new to fear, it happened, or at least appeared to.

Beryl was more important. She bit down on one of his paws, and when he didn't stir, decided to drag him… somewhere.

The answer came in an instant, given to her by the enemy, who had complained of no new prey and then looked towards what she presumed was the exit.

Then, in a moment of almost embarrassing failure, she realized it didn't matter where she wanted to take Beryl if she couldn't move him. He was heavy, far heavier than she could lift.

But maybe not too heavy to push. She leaped over him and set her shoulder to his hindquarters, ignoring the pain that caused her back–

And ignoring the other light wing pushing alongside her, or at least miming the motions. Cressa's badly broken neck meant she could mirror Lily's movements and face her at the same time. "Need some help?"

"Push harder," Lily growled, done with these stupid hallucinations, though each new one brought another spark of fear into her to eat away at her confidence and will to keep moving. "Or disappear, because I am not afraid of you."

"You are afraid of being like me," Cressa crooned condescendingly. "I approve of what you did to this one. You have surpassed me in betraying someone who wanted to trust you." She sounded genuinely impressed, which hurt Lily more than anything else had so far. "I could never have done that to Pyre."

Lily shoved harder, letting the agony in her back distract her from what the hallucinatory light wing was telling her. Beryl was moving, slowly but surely, and by pushing his hindquarters she was succeeding in not rolling him. But this was going to take a lot of time, and she didn't even know where she was going.

Then Beryl stirred, whining at an impressively high pitch. He began to thrash, weakly at first before apparently regaining some of his strength, stumbling to his paws and clawing at the empty air.

She didn't know what he was seeing, but she knew it wasn't real. "Beryl!" she barked. "Follow me!"

"No," Beryl whined, spinning in tight circles. "I have to… to…"

"Follow me or you will never see me again," Lily threatened, seeing that he was fully in the throes of believing all of this to be real. If she couldn't break him out of it, then she could make herself the worst nightmare and convince him to follow that way.

Though she was assuming he feared never seeing her again, enough to take the threat seriously...

Before her doubt could sink to full-on regret, he turned to her with wide, pained eyes. "You do not mean that?"

"You will never know if you do not follow," she snarled, running past him toward where the black dragon had indicated. Beryl was right on her heels, asking questions she intentionally did not let herself hear. Other assorted horrors were following them, but she was so wrapped up in escaping the real horror that she scarcely even noticed them. Maybe the fog she was still breathing at every inhale was not indefinitely effective; it might be wearing off, which would explain why the black dragon had not thought it safe to leave her alive.

Lily ran for what felt like a lifetime, a lifetime of fleeing her nightmares, her fears and regrets, Beryl trailing behind making quiet, plaintive pleas. The real stone pillars, spires, and stalagmites stopped cropping up in her path after a while, and Beryl began to pant, but other than that nothing changed.

A horrible roar echoed out from behind them, one she suspected was real. The enemy had found Beryl to be missing. They were once again being hunted for real.

But now Lily could see a small slope, one leading up out of the green fog, illuminated by a colorless crystal that shone like a pale star above a rocky tunnel littered with small pebbles and chunks of broken crystal, all overshadowed by a huge stone overhang that looked unstable. They were almost–

Lily skidded to a halt, throwing herself down to slow as much as possible, as fast as possible, and Beryl did the same right behind her. He had eyes only for her, but she had eyes for the massive, all too realistic gorge in front of her.

The last time she had seen a bottomless pit, it was just a black void, an easy thing to classify as false once she knew that was a possibility. This was far too realistic, a ravine that ran jaggedly across her path, filled with the same green fog she knew sank down as far as it could. This could very well be real, or it could be false, one final barrier.

An angry cry of denial rang out from behind her; Beryl flinched, proving it real.

Lily looked back to see ten, then a hundred of the black dragon racing towards her and Beryl, visible as an ever-growing horde of dark shapes following the same path through the fog she had used to trail it earlier, and thus visible from far further away than it would otherwise be.

There was no time to carefully test if this was real. Lily braced herself and leaped, throwing her body as far forward as she could.

Time seemed to slow down once she was in the air. She looked down, staring into the green-fogged chasm below her, and then looking at the edge she had leaped for. It was barely within reach…

And then, as she stared, as she fell, it began pulling back, moving to doom her, but she knew that meant the entire chasm was false, so the sight only filled her with horror for a moment-

Lily slammed into a painfully sharp edge and instinctively scrambled up, letting her scales be scratched and ripped off by the jagged stone in her haste to be up the side of the real ravine she had jumped, the one her hallucinations had extended but not created. Beryl flew right past her, seeing the light of the tunnel, and she stumbled up to run after him, running out of the fog and up the slope as fast as her bruised and bleeding midsection would permit.

The black dragon of fear was close now, screeching unintelligible rants of rage and bloodthirst, but Lily almost didn't care. She raced Beryl to the tunnel and leaped through right after him, spinning to target what she had seen earlier, the large overhang jutting out over the tunnel entrance. A single blast to the edge of the interior caused it to fall, totally blocking the tunnel in front of her, and knocking her back with a wave of displaced air.

She stumbled backward, unwilling to be knocked over. She did not believe this to be over; the enemy could break through.

But when the dust cleared and all that could be heard was the frantic hammering of her overworked heart, she began to wonder if that really was it. The slab that had fallen was thick and solid, and seemed to have been carved around the edges at some prior time. Maybe this entire entrance had been designed by the black dragon specifically to be blocked at a moment's notice. If so, it would not be easy to unblock.

A crack showed on the rock, piercing the silence as it grew. Then the stone shattered, two thick talons shoving out through the middle of the break to pull back the rubble and clear a way. Lily almost despaired when the stone was cleared in a moment, revealing the dragon on the other side, raging mad and dripping copious amounts of venom-

Then she heaved a huge sigh of relief. The black dragon would not have venom; that was why he had decided to kill her. This was just another hallucination, nothing more.

"I have killed him," the hallucination cruelly pointed out, tapping a talon on the stone between them. "You just do not believe it yet."

Lily turned her back on the apparition. It was voicing her worst fears, nothing more. She had to believe that.

"I stayed with you. Lily, did you mean it?" Beryl asked desperately. "Lily, please tell me?"

She hated seeing him like this, vulnerable and very much afraid, but that would wear off. It had to wear off. In the meantime…

Lily took a long look at the tunnel past Beryl. It only led one way, and as far as she could see there were no more side-tunnels or other passages. The chances the fear dragon would pursue them here were low, and she didn't actually have too much to worry about if it came upon her in a narrow passage. Its wings were on its back, and she could blast at it without having to worry about missing or having her shot blocked.

They were safe. She ignored the specter of Beryl lying dead in the corridor and focused on the real Beryl. She had to think of some way to calm him down; he was very likely to be under the effects far longer than her, and she still hadn't recovered. That could be dangerous.

The only thing that came to mind was far too personal and touch-based for her comfort, given that he had requested they take a step back, but she couldn't think of anything else. It didn't help her conscience that he wasn't in any state to push her away… But she needed to do something; he was looking like he might bolt at any moment if he wasn't afraid of her disappearing on him.

She decided to try and settle him down, whatever it took. "You want the truth, Beryl?" she asked kindly, approaching him. "I love you, and anything I ever said that does not support that is false. Come here."

Beryl hesitantly leaned in to her embrace, shivering with nerves. "Lily, you said-"

"I know," Lily murmured, pulling him down to the ground. "Beryl, obey me. I see you as an equal, but right now you are sick, so obey me, please. I would try to do the same were our positions reversed." She only had a vague idea of how to combat this, but her idea was not a bad one.

Beryl crouched, not really comforted at all. "I will, but Lily-"

"No objections," she crooned, shifting to the side to covering his head with her wing. She was taking a chance, but a skittish, hallucinating dark wing was too dangerous to go anywhere with. He might shoot at her in the mistaken belief that she was under attack.

"I-"

"No talking," she continued, pressing his head down to the stone with her wing, being sure to rub against him in the hopes that would make this seem less like her pinning him and shutting him up, which was what it really was. "No moving. Stay still. And no throwing me off," she finished, painstakingly pinning his ears to his head and hopefully blocking out all sound.

She was not putting him to sleep; sleep might not help in ridding him of this affliction. The best she could do was depriving his mind of anything to work with in conjuring up fresh horrors. Right now he could not see or hear anything but her, and she was pretty sure his hallucinating could not affect him all that much, not when his eyes only saw the membrane of her wings.

Every few moments Beryl started, flinched, or for a split second tried to throw her off. She never let him, and he would not raise a claw against her, so he had no choice but to lie still and silent. No worried questions, no freaking out, and no accidentally making things worse by lashing out in fear.

"You are treating him like a child," a voice Lily recognized as belonging to Whirl, of all people, called out tauntingly. "He will take this as proof you do not see him as an equal, and never did."

"I am coming, this barrier will not hold me," the dragon of fear called out from the distance.

"How could he love you?" Cloud asked scornfully. His presence, or the illusion of such, was even more of a surprise than Whirl or Cedar. "You are flightless, barren, and cruel. Even I never loved you. just your power."

"We will kill you if you show yourself," Crystal growled. "I hate you for being weak and acting like Claw. I look at you and see Claw."

Lily almost broke with that one. She would make that right; she had to.

"You will never make it up to anyone," Beryl's own voice said decisively, with an air of finality. "We will die down here, lost and alone."

No. She would not let that happen either. The voices were getting fainter and less realistic; she began to hear them in her head instead of right beside her or off in the distance, which was at once harder to ignore but easier to dismiss as false.

"You will never be happy again."

"Beryl would have led a far better life if he never met you."

"He is going to die because of your mistakes and your weakness."

Silence fell, real silence. Lily couldn't be sure her hallucinations were over, but she suspected as much. Beryl, on the other paw, was still very much in the throes of every kind of fear imaginable.

She felt the rapid beat of her heart slowly return to something akin to normal. She continued to shift her wing over Beryl's head and back, small movements and pressure to let him know that she was both still there and still very much paying attention to him. She had no way of knowing whether doing so was helping, but keeping up some sort of movement made her feel a little less like she was holding him prisoner, and more like she was comforting him.

None of this was how she had wanted to return to being close to him, but it was still similar enough that she would have felt bad about ignoring his wishes under different circumstances. As she waited for him to calm down, she resolved once more that no matter how long it took, or how much she had to do, she would regain this level of trust and intimacy for real, not just for while he was vulnerable and unable to think straight.

After that, all she had to do was wait, because she was far too tired and traumatized to think about anything. They had escaped, and that was all that mattered.

Author's Note: Those of you with good memory will remember the most recent time this specific antagonistic species of dragon (an OC species, if anyone was wondering, these are about as canon as the Guardian was) was mentioned in this story. But I wonder if anyone will be able to point out the first time this species of dragon was referenced? I'll give you a hint; it's probably a lot further back than you might think. The answer will be in the next chapter's author's note, so think and reply fast.