Thanks to Silverlightning97 for the review :3 And now, my friends, the confusing and mildly exciting stuff begins.

DREAM EATER

All she could see was black.

"Hello?" she called, blinking in confusion, trying to pick out some sort of detail from the never-ending darkness. She could see her paws, so she was not blind, but aside from herself there was no other detail but black.

A sound suddenly burst out from the abyss, making Gustpaw jump. "Ugh, finally. Good gracious darling I thought this would never work. Scenery needs work though…" the voice was male and jovial but unfamiliar. Then in the blink of an eye there was a brown tabby tom standing in front of her, staring at her gleefully.

"Brilliant, we're both here all visible and everything. I never was good at Dream State, but look at this!" he bobbed his head in self-congratulation, his amber eyes still fixed on Gustpaw.

She didn't understand. Of course she didn't; she was standing her in pitch darkness with a strange cat. Nothing made sense. He said Dream State… was she dreaming? It felt so real…

"Speechless? I know, I know, it's pretty amazing. I'm first to master dreamwalking, I hope you know. Everyone else took so-" he cut himself off suddenly, shaking his head, "I'm sorry, you must be horribly confused, dear. I'm Jolana and we don't have much time. I can already feel myself being ripped out of your dream…" he trailed off, swaying slightly and trying to grip earth that wasn't there with his claws, shaking his head again.

"Jolana…" Gustpaw repeated, her voice a tremble, "You're not a Clan cat. What are you doing in my dream?" at least he couldn't hurt her. You couldn't get hurt in dreams; her mother had told her that when she was kit after she woke from a nightmare one night. This cat could not harm her. That comforted Gustpaw slightly, though she was still highly suspicious. First to master 'dreamwalking'? First out of whom, exactly? And how does one learn dreamwalking anyway?

Before she could ask any of these questions Jolana was off again, but this time his tone was serious, "listen, as I said we haven't got much time. The other group are already in the area and they seem to have more insight into the situation then we do. You have to leave as soon as you wake. Athena screwed up the possession with that kit and now he knows. I knew I shouldn't have trusted her…" he stamped at the darkness, muttering something to himself about 'salamanders'.

"You're lying!" she shouted suddenly, shaking her head violently, "you're lying. This isn't real. You're just some figment of my imagination telling me my biggest fears have come true. You're lying!" she yowled again, flying at the tom with claws unsheathed. It was her dream. She controlled the outcome.

But the tom slid swiftly out of her reach before she could even get close to touching him. He snorted, all the amusement gone from his expression. "You think this is just a dream? I wish it was, little kitten, but it isn't. You're putting lives at stake here and not just pretty little disposable dream-cat lives, real ones. I am not lying and you are not safe here anymore. You never were."

Her eyes snapped open.

"You can't say that!" she screamed, leaping to her feet. But the tom was gone and all around he the sounds of her clan-mates waking up all around her snapped her back to reality. Green eyes focused again and she found herself standing in the apprentice's dip, gasping for breath.

"What in StarClan's name Gustpaw?" mumbled her brother sleepily, staring up at her with weary eyes. Cinderpaw was stirring beside her as well, muttering something about whether it was time to get up yet.

"I'm sorry. Bad dream. Go back to sleep," Gustpaw muttered hurriedly, coiling herself back up again next to her siblings. Cloudpaw rolled his eyes.

"You've been having a lot of those recently," he grumbled, shutting his eyes again. Gustpaw supressed a defensive growl, tilting her head in confusion.

"What do you mean? I don't remember dreaming anything recently."

"Well you've been thrashing around every night for ages. I didn't ask you about it because I assumed they really distressed you and talking about them would only upset you." It was mildly endearing that he would think of her well-being like that but still, he could have told her. She wasn't fragile like their sister Cinderpaw. But she wasn't about to blame her brother on anything at this moment; he wasn't the focus of her anxiety right now. Why hadn't she remembered any of these apparent dreams?

"Oh… well, sorry, I guess," she mumbled, but it fell on deaf ears because Cloudpaw already seemed to be well on his way back to sleep. Sighing softly, Gustpaw shut her eyes again and willed herself to go back to sleep, forgetting about the tom's warning to leave. It was just a dream.

Her eyes snapped open moments later and a sickening feeling that something was horribly wrong was churning in her stomach. Leaping to her feet, she looked around for Cloudpaw and Cinderpaw but they were gone. She rushed over to the Warrior's dip and it was empty. The nursery was empty. The elder's den was empty. Honeyblossom was nowhere to be seen inside the Medicine den. She even crept into Elmstar's den and it was filled with nothing but shadows.

"Where is everyone?" she wailed, rushing about camp in hysterics, begging StarClan, Elmstar, her sibling, anyone to answer her. Nothing. Even the wind was still, and Gustpaw stood alone in the moon-dappled camp, searching for any sign of life.

"Now how's that for scenery, huh?" this voice was female, a self-satisfied coo that made Gustpaw gasp, whipping around frantically in search of its owner.

"Right here, honey," the voice was right by Gustpaw and so was a black and white she-cat with golden eyes that reminded the apprentice vaguely of Ravenkit.

Gustpaw jumped at the cat's sudden appearance, springing backwards and sending a strong gale rippling in the strange cat's direction. She reeled backwards, less shocked than Gustpaw expected.

"That was an acci-"

The she-cat held up her tail for silence, "I know. Isn't it always?" she sighed, an emotion Gustpaw couldn't quite identity flashing across her face, "I'm Athena and I am far better at dreamwalking than Jolana, even if he was the first to do it successfully." She announced smugly, straightening herself out again after being almost blown over by Gustpaw's accidental outburst.

Gustpaw blinked, green eyes watching the black and white cat curiously, "what do you mean, 'isn't it always'? Can you…" she didn't want to finish the sentence, to speak the words out loud.

Athena snorted but did not reply, instead lifting a paw as if to lick it. But then she twitched an ear and it was on fire.

"What on-" Gustpaw scrambled backwards in clumsy retreat, watching in horror as the flames danced over the she-cat's raised paw. Athena watched the flames herself for a moment, expression blank, then she thumped the flaming paw on the ground once and the flames flared up, the heat of them shining in Athena's eyes, then she thumped again and they were gone.

"Can I manipulate the air? No. Can I manipulate fire?" she let out a short, sharp laugh that Gustpaw thought sounded almost bitter, "yes."

Gustpaw didn't know what to say to that. She could control wind, Athena fire. Did the tom Jolana she had met in her last dream have a similar ability? Were there more cats that could as well? Or maybe it was just another dream… but how could her mind possibly come up with this?

Athena interrupted her thoughts, "and I can do it in Dream State too, though that's usual. In Dream State you are everything you are in real life, possibly a little more," she winked, "but enough joking around and sharing horribly shocking powers, this is important. I know Jolana has already come to you in his feeble attempt to get you out of here but he wasn't doing a very good job. He never does."

Something brown flashed through the air and Athena was on the ground before Gustpaw had a chance to register anything had even happened. Jolana stood over the she-cat, breathing ragged and angry.

"Say that to my face," he snarled, stamping a paw against the ground and scraping his claws through the dirt until they hovered near Athena's throat. A vine spiralled its way out of the earth and tightened its self around the she-cat's neck. Jolana's dug his claws further into the earth, never once breaking eye contact with Athena, who stared right back with an equally hard expression, depite the fact she was struggling to breathe under the grip of the vine, which appeared to be tightening as Jolana rooted himself more firmly onto the ground.

The grass around the two cats burst into the flame and Gustpaw shrieked as the wall of fire seemed to engulf them both, the smoke shielding them from her. She yowled through the flames for them to stop but the words seemed to bounce uselessly of the screen of fire, and both the cats were fixed only on each other, lips curled back in snarls.

"Don't… try this in... D-dream State…" Athena choked through the vine constricting her throat, struggling to retain composure. Jolana curled his tail by his side to keep it away from the fire blazing all around him, shifting uncomfortably as the heat spread across his fur and the taste of smoke burned in his mouth.

He considered her words, eyes watering as the smoke filled his vision. He shut them, unable to withstand it any longer. His grip loosened on the earth and the vine disappeared into the ground as quickly as it had come. Athena lashed her tail and the fire faded into nothing, leaving only the last wisps of smoke to disappear into the air.

"I can get you take that lie back when we're awake, I suppose," Jolana huffed, releasing Athena and trotting a few tail-lengths away from her. Athena rolled her eyes and chuckled disbelievingly, and then both turned their eyes back to Gustpaw, who was watching them with her jaw hung open and eyes bigger than two green full moons.

"Shocked the Sylph, did we?" Athena laughed, all hostility leaving her eyes. Jolana glanced over at her, incredulous. There was that word again, Sylph. What did it mean?

"We're not here to mock her, Athena. We're to tell her where to go," he snapped, giving her a last cursory glare before turning to stare at Gustpaw again, who had only just realised her jaw had been hanging open in most ungracious manner and snapped it shut, trying her hardest to feign calmness. She was dreaming, she was witnessing everything in the safety of her mind when she could not get injured, yet the heat of that fire had felt so horribly real and so vividly deadly.

"Ooh, good elemental, bad elemental. I like it," Athena shot back, purring in amusement.

Gustpaw could see the sparks of anger rekindling in Jolana's eyes. "There's a reason why I tapped into your State, Athena. Well, two actually; first is that I knew you would do nothing but terrify the kit," Athena rolled her eyes again at that, "and second is because Kashti is coming to get her. Right now. We have to get her out before he does."

Athena didn't like that and neither did Gustpaw. "Kashti? As in that grey cat who attacked us the other day? He could never catch me. We have guards who will see him," she insisted. How could he possibly capture her without the Clan noticing? The thought would have comforted her, reminded her that in reality she was safely curled up with her siblings, yet the growing look of terror on Athena's face suggested the grey cat had a few unexpected tactics that could undermine her surety.

"We can't let him take her to that imaginary master of his. It will ruin everything. We have to get her out," Athena mewed, not hearing her words. In fact, she seemed to have forgotten she was in Gustpaw's dream at all, focusing all her attention on Jolana, who was shaking his head.

"We're too far and he's too close. The only hope is to wake her up and get her to alert her companions." Now he turned to Gustpaw, approaching her, "you have to wake up. Just close your eyes think about the real world, where you are, who's around you. Wake up."

So she tried. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought about the WindClan camp bathed in moonlight, with Cloudpaw and Cinderpaw curled up beside her, sleeping softly, their only movements the rise and fall of their chests in quiet breathing. She imagined the whisper of the wind through the grasses, Shadepool's mutter as he took over from Stormwhisker as night guard, the stars looking down from the velvet sky, sparkling like the eyes of a million warriors now hunting in StarClan. She imagined and imagined but nothing happened.

"She can't wake up. It's not because of our connection…" Athena trailed off, eyes widening. Jolana bowed his head solemnly.

"We're too late. They've fed her that knock-out stuff," he turned his attention back to Gustpaw, who had opened her eyes again to the scene of the empty camp, with the two strangers still standing in front of her. Too late. What was happening? It couldn't be too late. The night guard would save her. She'd wake up when Cloudpaw prodded her, telling her to hurry because they had to train. Just like every day. It was just another bad dream. She'll probably have forgotten it by morning, right?

"You're going to be here a while. I've got to go and tell the other two," he sighed reluctantly then looked at Athena, "I can't believe I'm trusting you with this, but I think it would be a good idea if you stayed in Dream State with the Sylph and told her what is going on. She needs to be prepared when she wakes up."

Athena answered his sigh with one of her own, "fine, leave me to deal with the stupid wind-maker. I'll tell her everything." Jolana groaned, mouthed 'I'm sorry' in Gustpaw's direction and vanished before either of the remaining cats could argue.

Gustpaw turned slowly to the black and white she-cat, trying to hide the fear in her eyes. She was inside her own dream, she told herself, therefore she was safe inside her head, unable to be harmed. But she was not concerned about being injured. She was worried about what these 'details' were that Athena was supposed to share with her. And no amount of telling herself she was dreaming could save her from hearing them.

"Alright then soul-stealer, get comfy; I'm going to tell you a most fascinating story. It's the story of why you need to die."

Yeah I don't even know either. This was actually supposed to take two chapters to get happen but oops my fingers slipped? I just want to get this done and I know that should be an excuse to half-ass it but it's late and I'm tired and I want this posted up before I sleep. So you have yourself a poorly edited, confusing… thing. You're welcome?