Darkness had set upon the forest, the chill in the air punctuated by the sounds of the night. Ryuu sat just off the center of a large patch where the moonlight shone through the treetops, unconcerned with the fact it was difficult to see into the darkness from his seat. There wasn’t all that much in the forest he was afraid of, anyway.

“Hello, Ryuu.”

The dragon-buck turned to the familiar voice, his eyes lighting with pleasant surprise. She had not yet stepped into the moonlight, and Ryuu could just make out her pale green eyes.

“Hey, Kari. What’s up?”

Suddenly, a heavy silence fell. For too long, the doe was silent.

“Kari?”

She just stared, unmoving, though he heard her whisper something.

“What was that?”

“… All your fault. It’s all your fault…”

“W-what’re you talking about, Kari? What’s going on?” Ryuu suddenly felt a deep surge of fear, bordering on an all-out panic.

“I’m dead, Ryuu, and it’s all your fault!”

The dark figure stepped into the light, but it wasn’t his friend. It was her lifeless head, held upright and manipulated by a sickly black tar in the vague shape of the body of a deer. Tendrils of rotten goo had gone up through her open neck to contort her features from the inside into a wicked, wild-eyed grin. Black leakage mixed with blood drained from every orifice. The way in which her antennae hung so limply…

“Why did you let me die?”

Ryuu’s mind spun, and he found he could not stop the desperate words.

“I’m s-sorry, Kari, I-I didn’t mean…!”

He scrambled to his feet, and suddenly the whole forest lit up before him. Everywhere, there were heads, bloody and soiled with black tar, their features frozen into the same wild grimace on Kari’s face. All of them familiar. His mother, his father, Skylar, Rowena, Ourania, Bade, Toukan, Kusa, Alyx, Buttons, Ryou, Marik and so many more... The one that he would remember most clearly, however, was Evangeline, her once gorgeous hair in disgusting, bloody mats, her grinning teeth stained black and red, her lifeless eyes…

“And now I’ll collect your head!”

The Tar-Beast’s voice threatened to shatter Ryuu’s skull, but it would be severed from his body first by a black blade. Before the head could fall to the ground with its body, it was caught and brought back to the Dreameater by the same black tendril. With callous indifference, Kari’s head thumped to the earth, and Akuji put Ryuu’s head in its place. In the same disgusting way as done to Kari, the dragon’s features twisted into the familiar, ugly smile.

--

Ryuu awoke from the nightmare with a scream, and he felt a sudden chill on his skin. He was alive… His head and body were intact… But that didn’t stop his gasping, and then, sobbing. The reality he was in wasn’t all that great, he remembered.

He would have to apologize for waking everyone up tomorrow.