Death's Apprentice

For once, Lily was glad that she didn’t have to go. These dark entities were truly frightening, and she never wanted to see one again-though she knew that was probably very unlikely. Death and his team of loyal reapers had gone off with Sgt. Downey and a team of Guardians to go help the Dreamlanders with whatever had happened. Helen and Edgar had stayed behind.

“Lily! Play with me!” Edgar exclaimed, completely oblivious to everything that was going on. It was at times like these that Lily just wanted her mommy. She looked over to Arno and Helen, who were still talking. Arno was even laughing a bit, which made her happy. She liked it when her Guardian was happy.

“Lily, let’s play on the Guardian stuff-it’s like a playground!” he exclaimed.

Tempting…

“Ok!” Lily jumped up and ran after him to the crates and supplies. Some of the things reminded her of the monkey bars at the park her mom used to take her to, and if arranged right, they could even slide down punching bags and other things. They were soon joined by some other kids that were also taking refuge in the realm of the Guardians. For a few minutes, she was able to forget about all the danger that had gone on since she had died and jumped around like a normal little five and a half year old.

All that faded away when she saw Death walk back into the room, a somber look on his face. The world around her slowed as she feared the worst. She left the other kids and ran towards Death.

“What’s wrong? Did you save the people?” she asked. He sighed.

“No. We didn’t see anyone. We can’t even get in. I think it’s in default mode.”

Lily was about to ask what default meant, but to her surprise, she realized she already knew. She still wasn’t used to the speed at which understanding came in the Land of the Inbetween.

“The girl had the dream, I still say we bring her with us.” Sgt. Downey spoke up.

“No. She’s been through enough. We’ll have to figure it out on our own.”

“But they gave her the dream. Why would they send it to her otherwise? You said yourself that she has more in her than meets the eye.” Lily looked up at the two adults standing in front of her.

“I can go.” she said, feeling determined. “I’ll go get Arno.”

Her Guardian did not like the idea of jumping into the middle of the danger once again, but with some convincing from his young companion, he finally agreed. The two of them followed Death and Sgt. Downey down a winding torch lit hallway to a little room, where there was a group of people standing around discussing something quietly and urgently. Some of them, Lily recognized, others she didn’t.

“Lily, let me introduce you to our team.” Death told her calmly, gesturing to the people in front of her.

“These are some of the best Reapers and Guardians we have-and they are willing to help us.”

Lily saw Byron wink at her, and Fan, the Guardian she had met during the large reaping, gave her a friendly little wave. Her eyes scanned over everyone as Death introduced who they all were.

Ludovic was the old reaper with the scruffy white beard and a feeling of friendliness etched into the ancient lines on his face, his black cloak dragging on the ground. Kanika was a very tall reaper with her blackish brown hair in short dreads, and her skin was the color of chocolate cake. Vinicius was a very handsome man with short styled black hair and soft caramel skin with a round face.

Lily then turned to the Guardians who were there, where she looked up at Fan, with his long black hair and green tunic. She recognized the young girl Alex as being one of the Guardians who had showed her stuff when Lily had been trying to choose a Guardian. She wore her brown hair in a short cropped cut, and she had a belt fit snug around her waist where she kept several electronic little gadgets. Lev and Agrefena were brother and sister, and were very much alike. Both of them were very large and stout, and had unpleasant expressions on their faces. Agrefena tossed her brown braid over her shoulder, twirling her axe around subconsciously, and Lev rested a beefy hand over the hilt of his sword, running a hand through the little hair that he had. Lily wondered where his shirt went and if he was cold at all without it.

“It’s nice to officially meet you Lily.” Ludovic said warmly, shaking her hand with both of his. “Sorry it had to be in such circumstances.”

“Enough chit chat. Let’s get down to business.” Sgt. Downey grunted. “Now that we’re all here, it’s time to make our way to the glass portal to the dream world…”

“But-this isn’t the dream world!” Arno exclaimed, looking around. Instead of a fantastical world of color and randomness, they were all standing in a blank white room that wasn’t even that big.

“I know… We don’t know what to do or how to get through.” Death commented.

Lily looked around. So many people were counting on her. She looked at Death with his elite group of reapers-Byron winking at her again, which she was getting used to, Sgt. Downey with some of his best Guardians, and finally at Arno, who always seemed to be perpetually worried about something.

How were they going to get through to the Dream world?

Then she thought of something.

What if they were just hiding? Maybe they were already in the dream realm…

What could lead them to the people here?

Mr. Twinkleshine!!

Suddenly, a large cow appeared out of thin air, causing everyone to jump backwards in surprise.

“What in tarnation?!?” Mr. Downey yelled.

“It’s some kind of trick!” Lev lumbered, drawing his sword.

“We should get out of here while we still can…” Kanika muttered

“That is a cow…” Ludovic said with surprise.

Mr. Twinkleshine mooed in reply.

Lily was the first one to approach the animal and throw her arms around it.

“Nice to see you again Mr. Twinkleshine! Where are Fish and Star?”

“Moooooooo.”

“He says he ate them.”

The company that was with her looked at her with bewilderment.

“What? This is the Dream land! Things don’t make sense! That’s what you told me Death.”

“Well, yes… but…”

“So we need to go into Mr. Twinkleshine’s stomach. I think the people are there.”

“But how are we supposed to get into… the… cow’s… stomach?” Vinicius asked with a bit of wariness. It was obvious that he had never had to do anything remotely down and dirty, and the idea of jumping into a cow’s stomach was less than pleasing.

Lily thought about this.

“We need to do a spell so we can shrink!” she decided.

“What?”

“Everyone put their hands on your head and sing with me!”

They all looked to Death for guidance.

“...Do what she says…”

Hesitantly, they all put their hands on their heads.

“Twinkle twinkle little star…”

The group reluctantly started singing with the little girl, who thought it funny that she was getting these big people to do these things. As they sang, the cow and the room seemed to get bigger and bigger.

“Is this… actually working?” the short stocky form of Agrefena asked. Soon, Mr. Twinkleshine towered over them, his booming moos making the ground they were standing on quake.

“Alright Mr. Twinkleshine!! Lick us up!” little Lily called out.

“Wait-what?”

“This is absurd!”

“I came here to fight-not to get eaten up by a cow!”

With one slurp, the giant cow’s tongue came down on them and sent them into the darkness of its mouth. The smell of strawberries filled the air as a few people tried to squeeze some of the cow saliva off with disgust.

“So we’re in the giant mouth of a cow. Now what?” a disgruntled Kanika asked.

“Everybody get in the boat!” Lily exclaimed. It was rather obvious that many people in the group were not used to the land of dreams yet.

“What boat?”

“That one!”

Everyone turned to where Fan was pointing, to see, in a river of cow saliva, a little boat rocking back and forth. Without hesitation, Lily jumped in.

“Come on everybody!”

One by one, they clambered on a bit awkwardly.

“Good idea bringing Lily, Mr. Downey.” Death commented as the Sergeant slipped and fell into the river. “We never would have gotten anywhere without her.”

“Yeah… Great idea…” Ashley grumbled, thick saliva dripping from his face. The small company drifted down the river and into a long tunnel. It began to get very dark. So Lily thought of what could help them see. She had a memory of running outside and catching little glowing bugs in jars. As soon as she thought of it, hundreds of fireflies came to light the way. But they were brighter than in real life-because this was the dreamland of course.

The little insects hovered around the crew silently, dodging a slapping hand from Mr. Downey, and illuminating the fleshy pink walls with a soft yellow glow. The river began to go faster and faster as it dipped down a throat. Everyone screamed, (some in delight and some in terror) as the boat flew down the dark tunnel.

“I’m going to be sick and I don’t even have a stomach to be sick with!” Ludovic exclaimed, clutching his stomach and holding on to the side for dear life. The river eventually flowed into a large cavernous place, which Lily guessed was the stomach. Glowing rock crystals emerged from the walls and ceilings, and even up out of the liquid they were floating on.

“Crystals? But I thought we were in a cow?” Alex said, confused.

“Crystal candy!!” Lily exclaimed happily, reaching for one. She broke off a piece and stuck it in her mouth.

“Lily!!” Arno scorned. “You can’t just stick things from a cow’s stomach into your mouth!”

“But we aren’t in a stomach anymore. We’re in a cave.”

Everyone looked around.

As much as they hated to say it, she was right.

“Death, how is she doing this?” Byron whispered, breaking off a piece of rock candy and turning it over in his hands.

“I’m not entirely sure… Perhaps she understands the Dream Realm even more than I do…”

“It also can’t hurt that she has the imagination of a standard five year old.” Byron commented, sticking the candy in his mouth.

At that moment, the cavern echoed with distant laughter.

“Sandman!!” Lily exclaimed, looking around. But as soon as it had come up, it stopped. In her looking around the cavern, the little girl soon found something alarming.

“We need to get out of here quick…” she whispered fearfully.

“What is it Lily?”

Silently, she pointed.

Off in a corner, staring at them, was a small group of dark entities, their inky bodies illuminated by the glowing blues, greens, and purples of the crystals.

“We can take them.” the cocky Guardian who Lily thought was very big growled, slamming a meaty fist into his other hand.

“I say we go ahead and get rid of them before they come after us!” Agrefena added to her brother.

The two of them gave a cheer and pulled out their large sword and axe and jumped out of the boat and began wading through the water-heading towards the shadows staring at them.

“Wait!!”

But it was too late. The two Guardians made it to the shore and charged the dark entities with a war cry, brandishing their weapons. The shadows made no move as they got closer and closer. The woman’s axe came down on one of them, slicing it in half. Most of the company sitting on the boat cheered.

But the small victory did not last long. The two halves of the shadow tremored for a moment and then stuck itself back together. Faster than the eye could see, it wrapped its spindly appendage around her arm. She tried to pull away, but without success. The group watched in horror as her arm began to blacken. She screamed as the darkness overtook her and she collapsed to the ground and was surrounded by the shadows. When they dispersed, the former Guardian stood as a new dark entity.

“Lev!! Get back here!!” Sgt. Downey ordered desperately. The muscular man jumped back into the water and tried with all his might to swim away. Fan drew his bow and shot arrow after arrow into the inky figures, and Alex brought out glowing electronic knives that would slash and zoom back into her hand, but soon the large man was also overtaken. They watched in disbelief as the dark entities pulled him struggling underwater, blackness bubbling to the surface. The water calmed itself as the Guardian disappeared beneath the surface.

“What do we do now?!?”

“They’re stronger than we thought!”

“We can’t handle those things!!”

As everyone argued, the shadows got closer and closer and started to circle the boat. What should they do? Lily tried to think. She remembered the times where she had been dreaming and realized that it all wasn’t real… At that point she had been able to control what had happened in the dream. Silently, Lily made her way to the bow and watched the shadows swirl around in the water. For some odd reason she felt calm. She was in the Dream world. She could do anything. Calmly, she reached her hand into the river, and a white light slowly flowed from her fingers and spread throughout the water. The company slowly stopped arguing as they noticed the light.

The dark entities screeched, but were being driven back by the light. The river seemed to glow as the power from the little girl’s hand overflowed onto the shore. The dark entities hissed and vanished down a dark tunnel, and with a bubble, Lev and Agrefena surfaced as the light subsided, completely restored to normal. Everyone gawked at Death’s apprentice as the two drenched Guardians clambered back into the boat.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Lily shrugged. “It’s Dreamland. I can do whatever I want.”

There was a slight pause.

“Maybe she really is your apprentice Death.” Alex commented.

Arno turned to him. “Is that the power you were talking about before?”

“...I think maybe it is...”

Before long, they were all underwater in a fantastical coral reef with brightly colored fish and sea anemones. None of them really knew how they got there, or how they all were able to hold their breath so long, but they figured it was simply better to stop worrying about things and trust the little girl that was leading them.

A sea manatee with purple hair majestically grazed across the bottom, unaware of the people above it. Off to the side, some clown fish performed a very complicated dance maneuver to a quite jazzy song. And in front of them, two sword fish were swashbuckling for the honor of a rather hideous looking Angler fish, who was busy painting her fins and fixing her hair.

Lily led them to an underwater canyon, shadows being cast on creatures that liked it better in the dark. The stony walls jutted up out of the sand, standing as a sentinel to the shipwreck that lay in its midst.

“Ok everyone, search the shipwreck for something.” Lily’s speech bubble said, floating above her head. They all nodded, and spread out within the wrecked pirate ship. Arno made sure to stay close by to the little girl as they swam over glittering gold coins and corroding goblets.

The two of them swam through a hole in the deck, dodging the broken boards. Down in the heart of the ship, half buried in sand, Lily found a small treasure chest. She slowly opened it to find a very familiar fish swim out. The fish from her nightmare. As soon as she picked it up, they were no longer underwater, but sailing on the pirate ship.

Lily looked down at the limp fish in her hands.

“Wait…I know who this is…” she said. Arno followed as she ran up onto the deck.

“I found Fish!!”

“Yes. That is a fish…”

“No! Fish!! My friend!” The fish spun and flopped out of her hands and got bigger and bigger Soon, there was a boy on the ground, sputtering and shaking.

“Fish!!” The usually friendly boy did not say anything. He simply curled up and shivered. Death made it to the front and knelt down beside him.

“Hello Fish. Glad to see you. What happened? Where is everyone?”

“Th-they want to turn us all...” he stuttered. “They just want us to be as miserable as they are… So we had to hide. We had to hide…”

“Hide where? Where is everyone?”

But by this time, Fish lay unconscious.

“He needs miracle medicine.” Lily said after a moment.

“Sorry kid, but I think this goes past dream land status.” Mr. Downey sighed.

“No, I don’t think it does.” Arno piped up. “Just let her do whatever she’s going to do.”

The Sergeant shrugged and stepped back.

The little girl approached the boy, and slowly pulled a spray bottle out of her pocket. To everyone’s surprise, she simply sprayed him in the face with glitter, causing him to jerk awake. Fish rubbed the sparkles off his face and smiled at her.

“Looks like you’ve become a true Dreamlander Lily.” He said weakly, shaking himself off. The boy looked around, looking worried. “Where’s Star?”

“We don’t know. She’s not here.”

“She’s not?”

He jumped up in a swirl of air and looked here and there, searching desperately for his friend.

“She was supposed to be with me in the treasure chest. Star!! Star!”

“Fish, I’m sure she’s simply with the others.” Death assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder. The boy nodded, a smile spreading on his face as he looked down at Lily.

“Thanks again little Lily! I owe you one!” The little girl gave him a toothy grin.

With that, he ran to the steering wheel.

“Let’s go save the others!!”

The steering wheel of the ship turned into the steering wheel of a bus, and everyone held onto the seats to try to find their bearings. Lily looked out the window to see that they were racing towards an erupting volcano.

“Uh… Why are we moving towards the volcano?” Arno said a little hesitantly.

“Cause that’s where everyone is!”

“...Of course. Why did I even ask?”

Fish swerved the bus around a river of lava and hit a bump as flaming rocks fell from the sky. Everyone held on as the bus bounced up the rocky terrain.

A couple of people screamed as the vehicle launched itself into the crater of boiling molten rock. And before they knew it, they were crashing through a wall and into a plain white room, looking through the cracked windows of the bus at a large group of wide eyed people.

“Wait a second...Isn’t this the room we started in?” Someone commented as they all exited the bus a little shakily.

“Fish!” Shoelace exclaimed as she, Pippers, Diddle and Backpack ran and hugged him.

“Where’s Star?”

“She’s not here?” Fish asked, the worry coming back to his face.

“Death! I can’t express how good it is to see you right now.” Morpheus said gratefully, approaching the rescue party. Death couldn’t help breaking out into a smile.

“Don’t thank me. Lily’s been leading us the whole way.”

“Thank you Lily.”

“Your welcome!”

“All right. Now let’s get everyone-.

“WAIT! We need to find Star!!”

It was suddenly starting to dawn on everyone that Star was not there, and Fish’s usually cheerful eyes began to fill with tears. Death looked over the multitude of Dreamlanders before him, and Lily thought he looked older than ever.

“Let’s get everyone out of here. A few of us will stay behind to find Star.”

Sgt. Downey nodded and then turned to his Guardians.

“Sounds like a covert operation. Alex, I want you to stay. You three, get the rest of these Dreamlanders back to the Guardian realm. Understood?”

“Yes sir!” The four Guardians said with a salute.

“Byron, may I ask you to stay behind with us while Ludovic, Kanika, and Vinicius get the others to safety as well?” Death asked of his reapers.

The man nodded.

“I’m not leaving without Star!” Fish said-sounding determined.

“Of course not my young friend. And I will not leave you alone.” Morpheus came up behind him and punched him playfully on the arm.

“Hear hear!” the sandman’s shirt agreed.

“We can come too-.” Shoelace began, but Morpheus cut her off.

“We need you all to get to safety now. We can’t have too many of us disrupting the dream mists and scraps and alerting the dark entities. Make sure everyone gets out.”

Fish’s friends reluctantly agreed to do so.

“Now…” Morpheus began as he turned to Death. The multitude around them began the transportation in shifts with the Reaper’s cloaks disintegrating groups into dark mist while the remaining Guardians stood on the lookout for anything that might come their way.

“Should we split up and cover more ground?”

“Yes. Mr. Downey, you Byron, and Fish come with me. Alex, you go with Mr. Sandman here and Arno and Lily. Morpheus-do you have any means of communication?” Death asked authoritatively.

“Why yes. I hope you don’t mind the oddness of it all… Keep in mind we are in Dreamland.” He told them as he pulled out a banana and a wrench. Fish took the banana from him with an odd look from the Sergeant.

“I’ll take you word for it that we’ll be able to communicate now…” he mumbled a little more for himself than anyone else.

“Thank you Morpheus.”

And with that, Death wrapped his cloak around his group and they disappeared in the familiar dark wispy cloud.

“Lily, I hear you’ve been quite a help today. Where do you think we should start looking?” Morpheus asked kindly. The little girl eyed the bus that was sitting halfway through the large hole they had made.

“I think we should get back on the bus.”

“All rightie. The bus it is then.”

Morpheus and Lily seemed to be on a wild goose chase as they took their company from place to place, trying to find Star. After searching on the moon, a jungle, and even a public restroom, they started to feel a little less than hopeful.

“Ok. So I know I don’t know much about the Dream world, but shouldn’t we be looking somewhere Star might be trying to keep herself safe with? I mean-Fish was in a treasure chest at the bottom of the sea…” Arno reasoned as he eyed a sparkly urinal with interest.

“Bottom of the sea…” Lily thought long and hard. Fish was a fish in her dream, so maybe Star was a…”

“Morpheus!! I think I know where she is!” The little girl exclaimed. Their surroundings started to shimmer and change, and soon their little company was standing on a little cloud in the middle of space.

“This place is just plain weird…” Alex muttered to herself, her hand on her electronic knife.

“Tell me about it…” Arno agreed.

“Fantastic Lily! Why didn’t I think of this?” Morpheus exclaimed, clapping his hands.

They didn’t cheer for long though, for a sudden cold sunk down into their very bones, sending a chill up everyone’s spine, and Lily knew that the dark entities were lurking somewhere in the shadows-waiting to jump on them.

“Can’t have a laughing shirt in this mess…” Morpheus said quietly to himself as he changed into his serious shirt with a snap of his fingers. “Don’t want to give away our position…”

The silence of the new place was downright eerie. Lily did not like it all as she looked around for anything that might be Star in disguise. She jumped when she thought she heard an echoed scream.

“We need to keep moving.” Alex growled, her electric dagger humming and the gears on her belt turning and glowing with an electronic blue. “Move us however you will, but just get us somewhere.”

Lily nodded and looked around, where she could see a button floating in the air. With realization, she moved the little cloud towards it and reached up to grab it. It was Star’s! It had to be!

“Let’s get a better means of transportation…” Morpheus told them nonchalantly as the cloud they were turning into morphed into a giant two headed cat with wings.

“Hello there Mrs. Poppy. Do you think you can help get us around?” the man asked kindly, stroking the cat’s long greenish blue fur. Mrs. Poppy purred in reply as once again, Arno and Alex exchanged glances from behind the animal’s wings.

Screeeeeeech!!

“Oh no…”

The dark entities knew they were there, and even though she couldn’t see them yet, the little girl felt a little bit of fear. The sound echoed through the great expanse, causing her to shiver.

“Mrs. Poppy! Go!” Morpheus commanded, and the great cat meowed with both her heads as she flapped her wings and sailed through the sky with amazing speed.

“There!! Look! A star!!” Lily gasped pointing. Up ahead was the star from her dream-complete with pigtails.

“Good job Lily! Now grab it as we fly by!” Morpheus yelled over the wind. Lily stood up on the cat and reached out to the star, bringing it down out of the sky. Suddenly, she was screaming as a white hot pain shot through her fingers and she dropped it on the cat’s back. They were no longer in space. They were surrounded by fire. And it was then that Lily realized that the others were no longer with her.

“Arno? Morpheus? Guardian lady??” she asked in a panic.

She was by herself.

Surrounded by fire.

“Help!!” Someone cried from behind burning wood. Lily was about to call out to whoever it was, but someone beat her to it.

“I’m here! I’m here!”

Lily coughed with the smoke and peered around a smudged and broken doorway. Star was on the ground in room as the dark smoke billowed around her. She coughed and tugged as her leg was caught under a fallen board. Helping to pull her out of it was Fish.

It was then that Lily realized that she was watching a death vision.

Fish and Star looked a lot different than she knew them now. They were younger and thinner, and were wearing drabby normal clothes-a huge difference compared to their usual colorful overalls and sea robe. They couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Star’s curly red hair was in a tangled bushy mess around her head, and Fish had ash smudged on his cheek.

“We’re going to die!!” Star sobbed.

“No we are not.” Fish said obstinately as he pulled the boards off of her.

She gasped and clutched her leg, and he examined it to see that it was burned very badly.

“Jacob-please don’t leave me-don’t leave me...” She begged, clutching onto his singed sleeve.

“I won’t Miranda. Stop worrying. Put your arm around my shoulders.”

It took Lily a moment to realize that Jacob and Miranda were Star and Fish’s real names. They had told her that Fish and Star were made up in the first place, but it was still weird to hear them called by anything different.

“JACOB!!” Star screamed as the flaming ceiling above them came down on top of them.

Lily stared at the fiery pile that had come down. She was sure the death vision had ended, but for some reason she was still here… Maybe it was more than she thought it was. The little girl started to search around the blaze, the heat warming her skin and the thick air making it hard to breathe. She began to crawl-remembering once when firefighters came to her school and taught her what to do in an event of a fire. She heard a cough to her left, and to her relief, she found Star there, sprawled on the ground, with her colorful overalls and curly red pigtails tied with bows.

“Star! Star wake up!” The girl just groaned.

She needed Fish and the others.

Lily dug her hand into one of the girl’s many pockets and pulled out a banana like the one Fish had grabbed from Morpheus. Hopefully it would work… She poked the banana like she was pressing buttons, making beeping noises while she did so.

“Hello?” she said hopefully.

“Lily!! Thank goodness! Where are you? Where did you go? You touched the star and then vanished. Your Guardian has been most distraught.” Morpheus’ voice buzzed from the banana.

“I found Star! She needs Fish! We’re in a fire!” she exclaimed, making no sense whatsoever to those who did not understand her young mind.

“Ok. Step back from your communication. We’re coming-.”

Before she knew what was happening, Morpheus’ head was coming out of the tip of the banana, and one by one, he, Arno, and Alex appeared before her.

“This is her death vision!” Lily exclaimed as Morpheus turned his attention to the girl on the floor. “She needs Fish to come and save her-.”

Screeeeeech!!

They all whirled around to see that there were dark entities standing in the flames of the fire, the flames dancing across their black bodies-causing them no harm.

“They’ve created a nightmare scene just for Star!” Morpheus coughed, looking around. “Quick-call Death and the others and get them here now!”

As he said this, the dark entities phased through the fire toward the little group. Morpheus pulled out a giant candy cane from out of nowhere and started to use it as a machine gun to pelt them with butterflies. His face was very set and focused-very different than the usual joking smile she was used to seeing on him. His outer space robe billowed out behind him and the light of the fire illuminated his dark blue serious t-shirt as he pulled out a trumpet and threw it like a grenade. Beside him, Alex used her electronic gadgets to buzz around the room and cause flashes of light-the dark entities roaring in response.

Arno held out his hands as more of them started to come their way. As he did so, thousands of apples came out of nowhere and pelted the inky blobs. The Guardian took a step back in surprise at what he had down.

“That felt…really weird…” he mentioned as he brought in a river of milk down from the sky to flush out the fire and dark entities. As the three of them were fighting, Lily reached for the banana she had used to communicate with and punched in more fake numbers.

“Hello? Death? Fish?”

“Lily?” Death’s raspy voice buzzed in from the fruit.

“We found Star! She needs Fish and there are dark entities-.” No sooner had she said this than Fish’s head started to emerge from the tip of the banana, and one by one, the others did the same.

At first the boy seemed a little petrified to be stepping into the burning building that killed him, but all of that vanished when he saw his friend lying on the floor.

“Star!!” he yelled in distress, running over to her.

“Jacob...” she moaned. “Don’t…Leave me…”

“Don’t worry-I’m here-I’m here.”

Slowly she opened her eyes to see that he was there, and then she stifled a sob as he hugged her tightly. Feeling relieved that Star was better now, she turned her attention to the people around her who were fighting off the dark entities.

Sgt. Downey was punching and jumping like she had never seen before, and Byron was shooting light out from his fingers. Death kneeled down to make sure that Star was alright, and then he stood up to take in his surroundings.

Hundreds of dark entities were coming down no them through the fire like the dark waves of the sea. Lily didn’t know how they were ever going to get out of this nightmarish place.

Lily stepped up with confidence, thinking that she could come up with some unicorns to guard them. However, she stepped backward in horror as the sudden appearances of the unicorns started to melt away.

“Wha-what’s happening?” she cried, running behind Arno in fright.

“This is the problem we’ve been running into…” Morpheus grunted as the candy cane melted in his hands. “They’ve been turning our creations into nightmares and using it against us.”

The shadows hissed and approached the group. The confidence that Lily had from leading a group through the dreamland suddenly vanished, and she could feel the fear gripping her to her very bones. She squeezed Arno’s leg tightly as the group got closer together for protection. There was only one person who did not back away.

Death stepped up, and his cloak seemed to elongate and turn into a shadow. Lily remembered seeing this once before-when she had first come to the Inbetween. Back then, she thought it was one of the scariest things she had encountered. The man she had come to know stretched out his arms, his face darkening. He got taller and taller…

“I COMMAND YOU TO LEAVE.” Death boomed. His cloak shot out like extra appendages. It almost reminded Lily of the dark entities, but more powerful. She began to realize that they merely tried to copy the sheer power that Death obtained.

The dark entities screeched, and Death’s cloak encompassed the group in darkness.

When the darkness dissipated, they were all standing in the realm of the Guardians.