"Quite an improvement from your cave, wouldn’t you say?"

  "Meh."

  Vale gaped, as she was dragged into the student dormitories by Shiver. Each gallery in the grand hall that Caledon and Shiver had found had led to a vast array of living quarters. Fearshapers in Anhdonia occupied the living quarters of the bottom floor. The rooms to the upper floors were blocked by similar wards, made inaccessible to Fearshapers that had yet to reach those stages.

  Caledon admired the workmanship of the room. Light orbs emitting bright golden light illuminated the room, and bounced off the chestnut brown furniture.

  Students’ belongings were strewn about the room, there was no sign of the massacre that had taken place downstairs.

  Shiver kept a hold of Vale’s hand, and pulled her along, up a curved staircase.

  "We found plenty of food, still preserved, so we won’t be eating Icey. Oh sorry - Popsicle."

  "Shiver! I’m not food!"

  Shiver threw upon the doors which led into a long hallway. Students lived together in pairs, each were quite spacious.

  "We found other dormitories just like this one with more of a shared living configuration. But these seemed to be the most comfortable, and furthest away from…"

  Shiver shot Caledon a look, stopping him in his tracks. He gave her a discrete nod, and tapped Pevir by the arm.

  "We can stay together here. Pevir and Caledon can stay right opposite us. Nothing’s going to get past us."

  Shiver beamed, dragging Vale into their new room. It had been unoccupied, and featured two beds, a sofa and some other amenities.

  "Out you two. Shoo."

  "Wait bu-"

  Shiver slammed the door in Pevir and Caledon’s face. Vale stared at the girl in worry.

  "Shiver… shouldn’t we be hurrying to descend, and to get out of here? We don’t know how long it will be before my brother and Semille get here."

  "Don’t worry about them, I have a plan to deal with them when they do."

  She cackled maniacally, mumbling something under her breath.

  "If it ain’t broke don’t fix it hehehe."

  Vale just stared at her in confusion. Then Shiver returned to normalcy, sending a grin her way.

  "Besides, they won’t be able to hurt us! We’ve spent hours exploring this place, we should get more rest. You can feel the dream calling to you again, can’t you?"

  "But if my father sends him assistance… Not even the guardian would be able to protect us."

  Shiver cheerily started stripping.

  "S-Shiver!"

  "Well in that case, we’d be Feardamned anyway. We might as well be caught while we’re clean and comfortable. Get comfy, we’re going to feast in a bit. I’m starving."

  Shiver skipped to the bathroom, shutting the door close. Vale slowly sank into a couch in the centre of the room.

  "Please make sure she doesn’t eat me Vale."

  Vale smiled weakly. Her heartbeat had returned to normal, and Shiver’s antics had been a welcome distraction. Even if she wasn’t totally safe, she wasn’t alone.

  "No promises, Popsicle."

  ---

  Caledon and Pevir sighed in concert as Shiver slammed the door in their faces.

  "We’d better get to work."

  Caledon and Pevir headed down the hallway, stopping before the door located furthest into the corridor. Opening it, Pevir paled at the sheer amount of bodies they had piled into the room.

  "Let’s begin getting rid of them. They must have tried escaping to the dormitories."

  "Quite unsuccessfully."

  Pevir winced, as Caledon motioned to the first body.

  "Shiver… She’s surprisingly thoughtful, don’t you think."

  Pevir nodded at Caledon’s remark.

  "Clearing away the dead so that Vale doesn’t catch a glimpse of them. I wouldn’t have expected it of her either. Though… she could have given us a hand."

  Pevir’s face fell, as he thought of the corridor littered with bodies, and the library situated in the basement. To his disappointment, at a glance, many of the books inside had been defiled – burnt or torn to piesces, but some did remain.

  He could barely contain his excitement at the prospect of unravelling the mysteries around this academy, and the Archcity of Fear. He itched, to return there.

  "It’s no surprise her Fear was triggered. This academy is full of death. I wonder if we’ll be able to discover what happened here."

  Caledon winced at the thought of what could have caused all of this destruction. Especially in the presence of the guardian.

  "Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t."

  ---

  Vale lay awake on her bed, listening to Shiver’s rhythmic snoring. Her eyelids threatened to drop, from the fatigue of the day. They called a stop to the exploring after finding the dormitories and sharing a meal together.

  She refused to fall back into the nightmare. Once sleep took her, she would return right back to that dreaded dream. She recalled Lord Quietus’ words, that the first descent into her Fear, towards becoming a Fearshaper was confronting the object of her dread. But she couldn’t bear to revisit those memories.

  How does Shiver do it?

  Vale turned on her side to stare at the girl sleeping opposite her. The very same crazy orphan with more than a few screws loose who had still found room to afford her kindness. It wasn’t lost on her that Shiver had noticed her reaction to the dead in the academy’s basement, and had put off her intense drive to hop into one of those strange pods and dive headfirst into her Fearshaping journey.

  Shiver’s body rose and fell rhythmically, Icey, silent on the bed beside her. Flicking her gaze to Shiver’s face, she started, noticing that her eyes were open.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "Can’t sleep?"

  Vale jumped, letting out a yelp. She averted her eyes.

  "Won’t sleep? Gotcha."

  Shiver let out a loud yawn, and sat upright in her bed.

  "Whoever designed this system must have been more twisted than Avalkin’s nuts."

  Vale choked at the girl’s elegant choice of words.

  "But I’m sure that you’ve had dreams just as bad, or worse, even before you became a Fearshaper. The only difference is-"

  Shiver manifested one of her twin ice daggers in her palm, gazing into its surface, her face drawn into a complicated expression.

  "We get something out of it this time."

  Silence fell between the pair. Vale let out a big sigh.

  "I wish I had your courage, I really don’t know how you do it. You’re Insane, you do know that?"

  Shiver raised an eyebrow.

  "I don’t know princess, you seem plenty Insane enough to me."

  Vale huffed in doubt, raising an eyebrow.

  "Surely not. I’m perfectly ordinary."

  "How many perfectly ordinary people would flee from the Deathbringer in search of a fictional Archcity with the aim of gaining the power required to kill him?"

  Shiver tapped her temple as if reminiscing.

  "Not to mention absconding with an attempted murderer from Brimstone, and the greatest of all-"

  Shiver smirked with a glint in her eye.

  "Facing Princess Penelope and her knight Richard and living to tell the tale. Legends that shake the crab world with their footsteps. If that isn’t the mark of Insanity, I don’t know what is."

  "You recall I didn’t have much of a choice in fighting crabs."

  "And yet here you sit."

  The two smirked at one another, recalling their prior antics. They seemed so long ago, a world away from where they were now. Vale gathered up whatever little courage that remained.

  "Alright, you’ve got me. I guess it’s time to go confront my Fear again. I hope this is worth it, or there’ll be hell to pay."

  "That’s more like it princess, sweet dreams."

  Shiver stared up towards the roof of the dormitory as sleep finally took Vale. She turned away from her friend, and when she was sure that she was deep in the nightmare, she finally brushed at her eyes as her heart continued to ache.

  Elves spent their lives running from their Fears, unaware at how trivial they were in the face of other challenges. Her Fear of ice? The hallucinations and angst it brought forth?

  They were nothing, eclipsed by what now haunted her. While there were ways to run from your Fear, avoiding it, or even by confronting it, and descending as a Fearshaper…

  There was nowhere to run from grief.

  ---

  Vale opened her eyes, to reveal a familiar throne room. She felt goosebumps erupt on her arms as she took in the scene before her.

  The day she met her new family.

  Her father, Vetrian Revenant sat on his throne. Not one of bone, or anything so dramatic. It was the same lifeless dark grey stone that comprised Soulhaven.

  Beside him stood her new siblings.

  Safnir. The eldest son, Vetrian’s right hand man.

  He was often away from the castle doing their father’s bidding. He was a Fearshaper well into his descent, and even the ignorant, young Vale could tell. He stood tall and limber, and dark mist peeled off of black irises that stood starkly against the blinding whites of his eyes.

  Even before her Fear of death had been triggered, those pinpricks of darkness threatened to pull her in and smother her, carrying a silent promise to leave her amongst the the dead he had undoubtedly left behind. Of all her siblings, Safnir was the closest in nature – both in Fearshaping and personality – to her father.

  Savagery and Somnolence. Twin girls, from Vetrian’s second wife. When she had first heard their names, she had laughed. It had been insensitive, but she had been giddy and overconfident with her father’s newfound attention. What mother would curse their children with names like that?

  Vale had quickly realised that Vetrian’s second wife had been far more insightful than she was herself. Perhaps it was the clarity of hindsight, but Savagery barely concealed a rage that burned behind her stare, as she locked eyes with the new arrivals. More competition, for the Highlord’s attention. Somnolence just stared ahead, with empty eyes, devoid of pleasure or life.

  If only she had been wiser, to question what had turned his children into the monsters that they had become. Instead, she preened at the attention, the newest addition to the family.

  For if she had, perhaps, however unlikely, she would have been able to avert their accursed fate.

  No. I can’t continue. I’m sorry Shiver.

  ---

  Vale’s eyes snapped open, her chest heavy with her reluctance to confront the past. A wishbone stood upright on the bed beside her, inclined in her direction.

  "You’ve made good progress Vale. Your resilience must be acknowledged, for it is difficult for all elves to confront the inception of their Fear."

  Vale shook her head, manifesting a scepter of ivory in her hand. She barely repressed the urge to throw it across the room.

  "I can’t do it. I can’t see it to the end. I’m progressing at a snail’s pace."

  A wild Shiver appeared, barrelling into her.

  "Good morning! Rise and shine! I’ve got just the solution to your problem."

  With some difficulty, Shiver grabbed Vale around her waist, and hoisted her onto her shoulder.

  "My, you’ve been eating well, haven’t you."

  "Shiver! Let me down this instant! What do you think you’re doing!"

  Shiver kicked open the door to her room, ignoring Vale’s flailing arms and legs.

  Pevir and Caledon emerged from their own room. Where Pevir showed signs of recovering from the nightviper, with a newfound spring in his step, the same couldn’t be said for Caledon.

  The dark circles under his eyes had only deepened, and he let out a long yawn.

  Vale frowned.

  Was he avoiding his nightmare too?

  "Let go of me!"

  "Nope! You were frustrated about progressing at a snail’s pace, weren’t you?"

  Vale dreaded to reply, and Shiver’s intention slowly dawned on her.

  "Don’t you dare! I need to rest and recover, I don’t want to go back into the nightmare, please!"

  In reply, Shiver broke out into a jog towards the elevator, hoisting the girl as casually as she had hoisted Richard to his demise and eventual fate on Marta’s dining table. The parallel applied here, equally.

  "Don’t you worry, I’ve found just the comfy place to let you really rest and relax in."

  ---

  "Get me out of this damned pod Shiver! I swear, I will shove Icey so far up your mmffmf-"

  Shiver just grinned as Icey fled from her shoulder with a scream. She covered Vale’s mouth as she pushed her into one of the pods they had found earlier.

  "I’m so proud of you. You’ve gotten so much more vulgar, and we haven’t even been friends for very long!"

  Vale spat as she shook off Shiver’s hand momentarily.

  "Friends? The audacity! I’ll-"

  Shiver finally succeeded in pushing her into the pod. The serene voice spoke once more.

  Fearshaper detected. Reserves at maximum capacity. Initiate nightmare induction?

  "Please and thank you."

  Acknowledged. Prepare for nightmare induction.

  "Shiver, I’ll kill you!"

  "We really shouldn’t make a habit of this princess, it isn’t very healthy for our friendship."

  Pevir and Caledon watched in a daze as the black liquid emerged from the ground to race towards Vale’s pod. It covered the opening in a lattice, eventually sealing her within.

  Shiver turned to them with a smile, that made both men pale.

  "You know, I think I figured out the purpose of these pods."

  She walked around Vale’s pod, rapping it gently with her knuckles.

  "Most of us aren't Insane enough to confront our Fears headfirst… After all, who would want to delve into a traumatic nightmare to revisit the moment when their Fear was first triggered?"

  She smirked, rapping her knuckles on Vale’s pod.

  "This seems like a pretty convenient solution, locking you in with nowhere to go. Whoever made this was a genius."

  Caledon exchanged a glance with Pevir, who slowly backed away from them, his moustache twitching in anxiety. Icey peeked out from behind his foot, still reeling from Vale’s threat.

  "Sweet dreams lordling."

  Caledon gaped as Shiver made to leave the pod room.

  "Where are you going?"

  Shiver turned around to meet his eyes.

  "I said most of us aren’t crazy enough to face our Fears head on."

  Caledon stared at her incredulously.

  She couldn’t have…

  She shot him a wink.

  Patreon offering to up to 15 chapters ahead! You can now read up to the brink of the end of the first book (and witness Shiver, Vale and Caledon's descension!)