Blake has fallen into a strange sleep as a result of Sylvia's strange drugs. What will happen to him? What will he see in this dream world? Or will it not end up working at all? Whatever effects there are, it should be quite an experience for him. Better than walking endlessly through a silver desert. Remember to review!

Also, thank you to everyone who read my story "The Heir to the Dragon". I would appreciate if you continue to read and support it in the future! You can get there through my profile!

The votes for the Elimination Round have begun to pick up, that's pretty good! Hope we can start getting them to role in! We've got a lot of girls to choose from, and two have pulled ahead. Which two? It may surprise you! And some girls have surprisingly gotten no votes! I wonder who will make it to the next round? Keep voting for your best girls!

Nominated: Alcea, Ayame, Carrie, Caelia, Cynthia, Dakota, Darla, Elaina, Elizabeth, Julia, Kate, Kitty, Lila, Maddi, Marion, Nikita, Olivia, Sango, Sylvia

KedharS: Sounds like a blast!

Thunder Fire: That sucks. Maybe try through computer?

TigerOnMission: Vote in the profile!

JoshGamerV: Maybe dying, maybe worse. We'll have to find out.

Superduderr: It would certainly be possible, if Sylvia was at all the kind of person who cared about something like that.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 631

There was nothing but darkness around Blake. He would be used to that sort of thing happening in this strange world he found himself in, but this darkness was different.

If the lack of an endless grey desert was meant to be a comfort, it had utterly failed in that regard. There was just nothing there. He couldn't see anything through the darkness, and for a moment he felt a strange distortion in his head, like things were back to normal. After all, that's what darkness was supposed to be, right? Choking? Consuming? Filling everything around him so he could see nothing, not even himself. It was like night back home.

But right now, it was horrible.

Searing pain shot through Blake's heart, and he clenched at his chest. But it only grew more and more painful as he thrashed, realizing that he wasn't standing on anything, or laying on anything either. It was like he was floating in the water, but in this case the water was strangling him, pressing in on him from all sides, and-

More pain! Argh! Each breath was like agony! It was like his heart was pumping fire through his body, pain spreading through him like a virus. And with each stab of pain his head was aching, dark images and strobe lights flashing through his eyes as he tried to focus, tried to remember how he'd gotten here and what he was supposed to be-

The darkness was gone now, and everything was red. Blake looked around finding himself on solid ground. The world around him was shrouded in a translucent red veil, like peering through a thin curtain out into the room.

This lasted just a second long enough for Blake to get his bearings, and then pain struck him in the chest like never before. The veil turned to the silver of moonlight, and then with each stab of pain in his head it turned red again in flashes. Feeling the ground, he could stumble forward, his body telling him to run, like he could flee from the pain burning through him, but he couldn't move. And there was something… something there…

A black figure on the edge of his vision. He squinted, trying to get a better look, but just before the shadow could come into focus, his head exploded and his concentration broke, sending Blake to the ground as he rolled around in pain.

More flashes! More of the memories that had surged through him when the shadows first consumed him. The faces of smiling children, and his face! And the sickening faces of men twisted in horrifying expressions like demons, the sting of their mad laughter ringing in his ears as red crept over his eyes again, but this time it was the sticky saccharine scent of blood, oozing down his forehead and clouding his vision.

Brightness! Blake shielded his eyes from a piercing light and felt like he should approach, squinting to see…

Well. It wasn't as bright as he thought. In fact, it wasn't bright at all.

Well, not the kind of bright he ever could have imagined.

It was the brightness of a roaring flame right in front of his face, but this flame was the color of darkness. He found himself in a chapel, covered in dark fire, heat and dark light burning around him so intensely he could barely see.

And with that, Blake knew for certain that he was dreaming.

Because he had seen this nightmare before. Many times. Black flames and golden eyes, and a chilling smile that made him shiver with terror.

But never before had his dream been this specific. This room, this place… what was this? Where was he? And most terrifyingly of all, he saw no trace of the specter that followed him, that golden-eyed woman who haunted these dreams of his, a ghost from a past he couldn't remember.

She was nowhere to be found, there were only the flames, growing hotter and brighter, throbbing in tune with the burning sensation in his chest as he struggled to keep conscious. A weird desire, considering he was well aware that this was a dream. But something told him that if he slept now, the pain would only grow worse. He had to keep moving, forward… through the flames… he had to… had to…

Terror struck his heart with agonizing sharpness, his dream had never been like this. That realization frightened him, all the years this shadow had been haunting him, and now that it was different… what did it mean?

What could he find out about himself, about his memories, if he continued? A clatter rang out behind him, and he turned back, staring up at…

Her.

It was her again. Those horrid golden eyes, staring down into his soul, her face covered in shadows as he tried to see through the blurriness, tried to make out something, anything, as he tried to fight off the terror that struck him.

She smiled, and Blake knew he had to get away from her as fast as possible. He turned and tried to stand up, but he felt like there was a weight pressing down on him, keeping him from standing. He also couldn't find it within himself to turn. For some reason, all he could do was move ahead into the black flames. It was a mad thing to do, certainly.

So that's exactly what he did. He scrambled forward, crawling along the stone floor, pulling his body through the flames as they practically parted before him, making a path for him, leading him deeper and deeper into the blaze.

And in the center of it, he saw…

He saw something he'd never seen before. Which was the first part of this dream that had truly surprised him, and made him scared in a whole other way.

A large ring of black flames danced around an altar, and on the altar was a familiar shape, a lumpy chunk of stone and glowing white writing etched into it, symbols he recognized but couldn't read. Blake didn't even stop to think about WHY the tablet was in his dream now, or if this was even still his dream at all, and not some bizarre sight brought on by the drugs, or they mystical effects of the strange world he was trapped in.

All he knew was that he barely gave the tablet a passing glance when he saw what stood behind it, lit up by the pitch-black flames.

A large stone cross was erected above the altar, standing imposingly above everything else in the room. And lashed to the cross with rusted chains was a woman. Not the woman from his nightmares, but a woman he had never seen before.

The woman wore a shabby black dress that was torn and frayed at the ends, showing how long she'd been trapped here. Her arms were stretched out and lashed against the arms of the cross, emaciated and frail. He hair was a long ratty shock of white that was grayed with dust and lint, long and draped over her face.

For a horrifying second, Blake thought he was staring at a corpse. But he was quickly shown to be wrong, as her head nodded and she let out an exhausted groan, her eyes twitching as she seemed to be waking up.

"Help… me…" Her voice was a croaking whisper. "Free… me…"

Her eyes opened, and for a second Blake met her gaze, they were as blue as the sky.

Then a pain unlike any Blake had felt before engulfed him, and the world fell into agonizing darkness once more as he screamed.

Pain. That was all Blake could feel. Pain. He couldn't see anything, he couldn't feel anything, nothing but pain. His whole world was that pain, and the agonizing sound in his ears of his own voice. Everything brought him pain, and it wasn't just his heart that was tearing him anymore, either, every last inch of his body was agony.

He screamed and screamed and screamed, until an even sharper and more intense pain struck him across the face, stunning him momentarily.

He was just getting a grasp on what had happened when it struck him again.

"BLAKE!" And then the darkness was gone, and all the filled Blake's eyes was the concerned look of Sylvia Driscoll, staring down at him, her eyes wide with something that Blake had never seen from her before.

Fear.

His head was spinning and his whole body ached. Sylvia's mouth was moving but he couldn't hear her, he could barely see her. He squinted, trying to push past her, to try and remember his quickly-fading dream. He thought that he had seen something, something important, but it was slipping away from him faster and faster the more he reached out to try and grab it.

Then it vanished from his memory completely and all he was left was the vague image of black flames, and the dull throb of pain that even now was starting to fade as he regained his senses of the real world and moved away from the dream.

"Blake! Are you listening?!" Sylvia's voice was fading in too, but it wasn't as loud as he thought it sounded before. It was like a whisper. He squinted up at her, wondering if he was all there, or if he was still-

She struck him across the face and he snapped out of it completely. Oh yeah, he was back alright, that had been just what he needed, as much as it pissed him off.

"Sylvia!" Blake hissed. "What the hell was that for?"

"Are you okay?!" Sylvia demanded. Her tone was frantic and her eyes were wild. Again, not something he was used to seeing from her. Stunned momentarily by the surprising display that Sylvia was putting on, Blake paused for a moment before nodding.

"That pill of yours has a real kick to it," he groused, vowing to never listen to another one of her crazy ideas for as long as they were trapped in this horrible place. "I don't know if I can really call that sleeping."

"You were screaming," Sylvia said, letting go of his collar. Blake flopped back down into the sand, confused at how concerned she looked right now. She wasn't looking at him at all, as though his pain from his dream was an afterthought.

Well, that would be on-character for Sylvia, he figured.

"Let me guess. My pill didn't give you the nice, restful sleep that you were looking for, did it?" Sylvia asked. She was still staring at something off in the distance. Blake took a second. His back hurt, and somehow he felt even more drained than he had before he took Sylvia's weird drug. Yeah, he definitely could have done without that pill.

"I had a nightmare," Blake said, sitting up and rubbing his back. "At least, I think I did."

"Well let's hope you're still having it," Sylvia said, beckoning him to stand up. Now he was really confused. She wasn't frightened anymore, but she certainly had a grim look on her face that was something to be concerned with.

"Sylvia? What's going on?" Blake asked, now seriously worried. He stood up, and stared at her, not realizing that he should have been looking anywhere else.

"Remember how I told you that we probably weren't the only ones here?" Sylvia said grimly, staring out at the desert in the direction that they'd been running towards. "Well, looks like I get to be proven right. Lucky me."

Blake followed her line of sight, and gasped. There was movement off in the horizon, a strange ripple across the sand. It was almost impossible to see at first, but it was definitely movement. The desert was coming their way.

"Is it that worm?" Blake asked, squinting.

"I don't know what it is, but it pretty clearly isn't," Sylvia said. "Not unless that thing got a whole lot longer."

As she said that, her eyes scanned across the sand around them in a circle. Blake followed her, and saw more of that rippling all around them. Whatever it was that was approaching them, it had them completely surrounded and was only drawing closer.

"What… what do we do?" Blake swallowed. "Shouldn't we run?"

Sylvia rolled her eyes. "Oh, yes, bully idea, Blake, stuck in the middle of a desert with nothing around us for miles, and something coming at us from all sides, and your first thought is to run. I gotta say, as ideas go it's not in my TOP 5 but I can definitely see the merits of it."

The sarcasm wasn't helping.

"So what do we do?" Blake asked.

"Maybe they're friendly," Sylvia dryly replied. "Maybe they're here to help guide lost people like us to the exit."

Again. Sarcasm wasn't helping at all.

They were closer now, looming towards them at an even pace. They weren't even running. Which made sense. They already had them surrounded, why would they need to run? They could take their time. The wait was even worse for Blake, just wanting them to get here already, whatever they were. It's not like he was exactly enjoying himself right now.

As they got closer, Blake could see why it looked like the desert was moving. They were definitely people, he could tell that now. He couldn't make out much about them as far away as they were, though, because they were all wearing long cloaks the same shade of grey-silver as the sand on the ground. A perfect form of camouflage. And there was something else about them that stood out, too. There were tall ones, and short ones. A decent amount of each. At this distance he couldn't tell HOW tall and short they were relative to him, he could only see that some of them were about half the size of the others.

Blake was busy trying to keep from panicking as he stared at the lumbering shapes drawing closer across the sand. Sylvia, though, was quick to spring into action. She grabbed her backpack and began digging through it, pulling out her swiss army knife and, more importantly, her stun gun.

"Blake, hear," Sylvia said, tossing the black knife to him. "Third notch on the left of the upward-facing side."

Blake assumed that made some degree of sense. He fumbled around and flipped open to a nail file. He had a feeling that wasn't what she'd meant. He quickly tried another one, and found something that he thought could be a little more useful.

Blake didn't want to know how a 14 inch blade folded out of the phone-sized pocket knife, he was just grateful he wasn't going to be fending these creatures off with a pair of tweezers. In the time he'd taken to find the knife and look up, though, a lot had changed.

For one, the creatures were now about 30 feet away from the two of them, tightly hemming them into a circle. There were definitely tall and short ones, the short ones looking to be no larger than a child. What was this, 'take your kid to Mad Max' day?

"So, I don't suppose we can talk you guys out of this, can we?" Sylvia shouted to the strange cloaked people. "Whatever 'this' is? I'm guessing you lot aren't here to lend us a helping hand. So what's up? What do you want?"

She got no response from the approaching crowd. The figures lumbered towards them like a horde of zombies, and Blake had a sinking suspicion that Sylvia was right. Whoever these people were, they weren't here to help. His heart rushed in a panic, aching for some reason that he must have forgotten. This new mess he'd found himself in was a great reminder of how big of a problem the two of them were facing being trapped in this world, and he found himself wondering what these people even wanted with him.

It's not like they could kill him, right? Sylvia had proved that by stabbing herself. He wounds healed up quickly, just like their loss of stamina.

But Sylvia hadn't tested out what would happen if, say, you lost a finger. Would that grow back? What about a whole hand? As fear began pounding in his chest he found himself coming up with all kinds of scary scenarios he hadn't thought to consider before, and he found himself growing very very worried for his sake.

What if these people wanted to EAT the two of them? That idea was a whole different kind of terrifying. They shouldn't, right? He and Sylvia's compulsion to eat had completely faded, so wouldn't it make sense that these people would be the same?

But then… hadn't that worm tried to eat them?

And if they DID try to eat them…

Blake didn't want to think about that. The same way he didn't want to think about what would have happened if that worm had devoured them while they were still alive, stuck in their bodies that would never die.

A shout snapped Blake out of his confusion, and his head turned to see one of the silver-clad figures break from the circle and charge at him. It was one of the smaller ones. It raised its tiny hands, curled into fists, but there was no weapon. Blake took a quick glance to make sure no one else was coming their way, but every one of those figures seemed to just be watching and waiting.

Blake, for an instant, feared that this thing would be something super strong. It was small like a child, but still, there had to be some reason it was running towards them! But he was soon proven wrong. He swung the knife, only worried for an instant that he was actually using a weapon against another living being.

Maybe the Blake back home would have baulked at that. But right now, he had a very scary feeling that survival of the fittest was the law of the land right now, and he didn't want this thing to hit him first. It didn't block the blow, and he swung the knife down and hit the small person in the shoulder, cutting through their cloak.

"Aaaaargh!" The creature gasped out in pain, its voice as high as a child's. He saw a flash of pale skin and dark cloth beneath the cloak. There was something else there too, blood as black as oil seeping out into the sand as the thing fell back, holding its shoulder.

Its hood fell back and Blake saw its face. Sunken-in and pale, as well as delicate. The face of a child. Or at least, something that looked like one. It had pale skin and messy black hair tumbling down its back. The child spread its mouth and hissed, revealing rows of sharp teeth. It sprung to its feet and charged again, still hissing. Blake waved the sword at it again and the creature ignored it, its wounds already starting to heal. But it only had a child's strength, thankfully. Blake was able to grab the small child's arm and twist it behind its back, holding it in place and squeezing, forcing it to cry out in pain.

It shut up when Blake pressed the blade of the knife against the creature's throat.

"Okay! All of you! Stay back!" Blake frantically shouted, pressing it deeper into the child's throat as the figures advanced. He didn't know if he would go through with his threat, especially not against something that looked so much like a child. He didn't want to find out, either.

The only problem was, the creatures, people, whatever they were, they weren't stopping. A chilling though crossed Blake's mind that they might not even know how to speak English, or hell, any language at all.

Blake glanced at Sylvia for advice, but she looked so serious she was almost more scary than the zombie horde approaching them.

He shouted desperately at them again to ask them to stop, but they just kept advancing, getting closer and closer.

Uh-oh! Blake woke up from one bad dream into an even WORSE nightmare! That can't be good! What are these strange creatures and what do they want?!