It was dark again.

It wasn't the usual forest nightmare, though. Sol was inside this time, peering down a dark corridor. The sounds of drumming rain echoed on the walls. A sudden light illuminated the hall, followed by a loud crack of thunder. Sol screamed, but the voice that came from his throat wasn't his own effeminate squeal. It was high-pitched in a completely different way. It was a child's voice.

"Sol?" a girl asked from behind him. He cried out again and whipped around, coming face-to-face with a black-haired girl in a pristine white nightgown. He knew this girl—he was sure of it. He just...couldn't put a name on her. Something about her eyes, though, was comforting...they were bright emerald, in contrast to his own carmine ones.

"Why the hell are you awake, Sol?" a less gentle voice demanded. Sol looked up at the speaker; he was a boy just taller than the girl whose arms were now wrapped protectively around Sol's waist. He had a head of long amber hair that ended in charcoal. His eyes were the same comforting green as the girl's, although they looked hostile and unwelcoming. "Don't tell me you pissed the bed again. Oh my Maxwell, you did!"

"Don't be so rude!" the girl scolded.

"What!? C'mon! It's not my fault! He's been doing it since the incident, and I'm sick of washing his sheets every day."

"You can't blame him for that!" she argued. "Besides, you have the same exact problem, so I wouldn't be talking."

Sol couldn't help but smirk as the boy blushed, then folded his arms stubbornly over his chest and stamped his foot on the ground. He stuck out his bottom lip in a childish pout, one that looked hauntingly like the one that often glared back at Sol in the mirror.

"F-fine! Whatever." he growled, then looked down at Sol. "I guess you wanna sleep with us tonight, pipsqueak?"

Sol looked uncertainly at the girl, and she smiled at him reassuringly.

"It's okay, Sol." she giggled with a friendly blink of her eyes. "Come on, now. You'll always be safe with us. Right, Apollo?"

"Yeah..." the boy huffed. "You're safe with us, kid."

And then they were gone.

Sol was alone again, standing in the hallway and squinting in the darkness. The rain had stopped pounding. The thunder had stopped crashing. He had stopped feeling safe and secure in the other's arms.

He heard a scream from somewhere farther in the house. It was the girl's scream—the girl who had been standing with her arms wrapped around him only moments before. Sol reached for his yo-yo, only to realize that he didn't have it. His bracers were gone, too, and he was wearing robes of gold and silver. His bandanna was missing, too, and his eyes were starting to hurt.

Nonetheless, he started cautiously down the hall. He could hear men yelling downstairs, and he could hear the boy from earlier sobbing with anger and grief. He turned the corner just in time to see the girl collapse at the top of a spiraling staircase, dying.

"Sol!" she croaked. "Sol...you have to run. They're coming for you."

"Um...d-don't die!" Sol squeaked. He ran to her side and knelt down. Moonlight filtered through an open window. The girl's body shimmered with blood, and Sol whimpered, turning away and promptly vomiting on the floor behind him. The girl rubbed his back in a motherly gesture while he wiped the bile off of his mouth with one sleeve.

The shouting downstairs grew louder, and Sol could see the shadows of soldiers on the wall, pointing at the staircase and motioning for others to follow. The girl must have noticed, too. She reached into the breast pocket of her nightgown and pulled something out—a pair of glasses. She reached over shakily and slid them onto Sol's face. He blinked as his eyes adjusted. Something cold and metal fell into his right hand. It was a gun.

The men were ascending the staircase, now. Sol could see them clearly, outlined in the dark like his ribs were outlined in the skin on his chest. Sol turned to the girl for assistance. She merely smiled and let her eyes slide closed.

"Forget about me, Sol." she whispered, taking in a final, shuddering breath. "You have...to save...yourself...Sol...us...r...er... ..."

"U-um...p-please. W-wake up, Miss!" Sol pleaded. "Open your eyes! Don't...don't leave me."

He reached his shaking right hand out and traced the line of the girl's jaw. She looked peaceful...if it wasn't for the blood that scourged her features and stained her gown red, he would easily have thought she was asleep. He withdrew his hand sharply when he noticed, for the first time, that the girl was wearing a piece of fabric in her hair to keep her bangs out of her face. He recognized the fabric; he wore it over his eyes every day. Why did this girl have it? Who was this girl? He hadn't caught her name before she died, but he somehow felt like he knew her. Was she even real, or was she just a nightmare?

He pulled the cloth carefully off of her corpse and examined it carefully. It was undoubtedly his bandanna. He tied it around his forehead, then hesitated and removed his glasses.

"Let's call it a trade...okay?" he whispered to the body, putting the glasses on her face and placing a soft, emotionless kiss on her bloodied cheek. He didn't want to leave her there, but there was nothing he could do about it. She was too big for him to carry, and there was nothing to cover her with. That, and the tension in the air, along with the girl's last words, reminded him that he was still in danger. He stood to leave.

Then, the men reached the second floor.

They trampled the girl's body as they climbed the last few steps, leaving her spine snapped and her arms broken. She fell down the stairs, limp like a rag doll, and the glasses broke along with her. Before Sol could react, there was a sword at his throat and half a dozen Paeonian soldiers closing in on him.

"Hold still, kid." one of them snarled. "This won't hurt for long."

"No..." Sol gasped.

"What's the matter?" another of the men leered. "Don't you wanna join your sister in Hell?"

"If you stop fighting us," the first soldier added, "we'll make it quick, and...almost painless."

"N-no." Sol repeated quietly. He looked down at his clenched fists...the gun was still in his right hand. He didn't have time to think. In one quick motion, he lifted the pistol, gritted his teeth, and shook his head. "No! I won't listen!"

He pulled the trigger once.

The soldier grunted and staggered. He was dead within thirty seconds. Sol whined softly, feeling his knees buckle with the knowledge that he had killed someone. He had cut a human life short with one hand. One twitch of a finger had stopped a man's heart.

A second soldier tackled him, grabbing for his pistol, ripping at his closed hand. Sol shot again, just as the man slammed his arm against a wall, and he felt the force of the blow dislocate his shoulder. The gun fell with a clatter. The soldier fell with a shout.

Sol turned and ran.

He was awake with his head in his hands before he even realized that he had been dreaming. His sheets and clothes were drenched with sweat. He kicked the former off and lost a few layers of the latter, so that he was sitting on the ground in just his socks, shorts, and tanktop.

No one else was around to see him cry; Yuri and the others were out training. He vaguely recalled telling them to go ahead so that he could stay behind and rest. He regretted that now. He was more tired at that moment than he had been that morning—than he had been before he went to sleep.

What had that dream meant? Was it a recollection? The memory of his first kill? Or was it just that; a nightmare, meant only as a sick joke from his subconscious, hellbent on tormenting him...?

Sol scoffed.

If his subconscious was so determined to be consumed by its own masochism, he would let it. There was no point in getting upset over something he had no control over. All that was left for him to do was make himself presentable and find the rest of the party. He stood and made his way feebly to the edge of stream. The boy crouched down, took off his bandanna, and splashed his face. He glared at his reflection bitterly.

Something moved in the bushes to Sol's right, and he froze.

His right hand instinctively rose and pulled his blindfold down, so that he could rely on his other senses in battle, and his left went to his belt, grabbed his butterfly yo-yo, and slid the slip knot onto his middle finger.

The bushes shifted again, betraying the presence of another person. Sol stood up and growled. His knees bent in an unmistakable fighting stance. His yo-yo lowered on its drawstring, suspended in a sleep inches above the forest floor. His lips moved in a silent incantation; a bluish glyph appeared under his feet.

"Now, now," a woman whispered huskily from behind Sol, snapping his concentration, "there's no need for that."

Before the half-elf could react, he was slammed painfully into a tree. The yo-yo that he had pulled for defense was suddenly coiled around his wrists, restricting his hands tightly behind his back, and his blindfold was working abruptly against him. He struggled against his binds, but to no avail. The woman laughed, pinning him down easily with one hand.

"Let me go!" Sol seethed, twisting and jerking at his wrists.

The woman giggled again. Sol felt something sharp—probably her fingernails—digging into the skin just under his collarbone. He groaned quietly, feeling his knees buckle weakly and his body go limp. He slumped down against the tree, shuddering at the jolt that ran down his spine—a sickening mix of pain and enjoyment.

"So predictable." the woman purred. She crouched down next to him, then slid a hand into the pocket on his jacket. He growled in protest, but she shut him up with a swift cut on the cheek. "We know you have it...be a good little boy and stop fighting me."

Sol managed a choked whine and a gasp in response. He couldn't fathom what the woman was looking for—his mind was too hazy for him to think clearly—but she seemed determined to find it. One hand roamed down the side of his body, checking every pocket of every layer of clothing, while the other stayed on his face, firmly cupping his chin; on occasion, she would embed her nails on that hand into his skin, just barely drawing blood, and he would mewl ridiculously in response.

"Where is it...?" he heard her murmur, half to herself.

"I—" his voice cracked harshly, and he had to start over. "I don't—hnng—know what you're t-talking about..."

The woman ignored him and ran one fingernail across his face, just under his right eye, eliciting a gasp that Sol hadn't meant to let slip. He bit his tongue quickly, although the stinging ache that blossomed where his teeth clenched didn't help his current situation any.

"Hey, Presa~!" a girl's voice called from across the clearing, and Sol hissed out a breath at the realization that there were others there. "I found something!"

The woman let go of Sol, and he exhaled in relief. He heard her stand up, but she didn't walk away.

"Good job, Alice." she hummed to the other assailant. "Here, come deal with him. We wouldn't want Zagi to slit his throat by accident, would we?"

"No, we wouldn't." the girl giggled cruelly. "Right, Zagi?"

"No..." a male voice sneered in reply. "Of course not."

Sol felt a different set of hands grip his shoulders; merciless, sadistic hands that made his arms hurt. One of them traveled up, entwining itself in his bedraggled hair, and yanked his head back roughly. Pain rain down his spine, but he couldn't flinch away. He cried out in something that sounded too lusty to be anguish at the pain. The girl growled at that, like she wanted him to be in too much pain to enjoy it, but like hell, that wasn't happening. Something—a switch or a whip, maybe—lashed across his face, and he choked on a whimper. His blindfold fell off, and his cheek swelled where he was struck.

He could see the blurred shapes of his attackers, now. The one standing in front of him was a girl with pale skin and pale hair, dressed in a frilly red and white dress. Behind her, a woman with ears and a tail and a man with spiky yellow bangs and red and black hair were searching through Sol's stuff. The man was holding his satchel, grinning a demented grin, and the woman was holding something between a thumb and a forefinger.

Luma's choker.

"Put that down!" Sol ordered, writhing against his restraints. The white-haired girl stood up and kicked him in the ribs. He doubled over in pain, clutching his side and growling.

"Be quiet." she told her, her voice dripping with a sick sweetness. "We don't take our orders from you."

"Then maybe you'll listen to us." Luma's voice called from the treetops. She and Yuri were on the ground in a flash, followed by the others. Sol sighed and leaned back against the tree. This certainly wasn't a situation he wanted to explain to his teammates.

Welp.