Nightmares Vs Magic

Leon's brothers were aiding Adan in checking to verify holy items. Bence who also had his own batch of items to work on, was just as unavailable and he didn't want Eden to go. 

Since they were mute, if something happened and a scream for help was required, Bence wasn't sure if Eden would be able to scream loud enough to notify anyone. 

Thankfully, Adan had enough time to listen to Laurence tell him about this new case Dove found, and enough time to hand over a new item he created. 

"This is half of what I intended to make, but it should work well for your situation." He explained, giving Laurence an item that appeared to be an antique compass. 

"Don't let appearance fool you, this compass does not point North, it only points in the direction of nightmares. Large amounts of nightmares, ones that can kill. This will be able to help you find the mysterious island, but, if I am being honest, I made this with the intention that our interns, should they come across a mass number of nightmares they can't handle, then they will know to run away."

"Well, as long as it's fine with you, I'll use it for the opposite intentions now. Thanks." Laurence said, handing the compass to Dove so she can inspect it. 

"Where's Callius and Caldor?"

"On their way now that you called for them. They will meet you downstairs" Adan answered before quickly getting back to work. 

Joon really wanted to join in on the case since he had a feeling that Dove was going, of course, there was no way Enzo or even Adan would let him go. Adan is willing to let Joon commit plenty of light mistakes if they don't do much harm or if he knows Joon won't try them again after bearing the consequences. However, considering the timing and the details that explained how heavy the danger levels were, there was no way they would allow Joon to go, especially after Enzo let Adan know about what happened in Rangeley with the bear traps.

Most of the workers on the Alchemy, Apothecary, and Detective floors were swamped, and that left only a few from the gym floor, along with the field agents who came by to restock on their supplies and to help. 

Sienna and her boys had just come back after finding no other leads from the doll house case, and Merel came to return some Captum books, all the pages filled up. Annabelle really wanted to go with, becoming very curious as soon as she eavesdropped and heard something about an unknown island. Luckily for her, she was allowed to go, because Ursa was going on the case as well. 

Laurence sent Dove to go and ask Liora and Lucia if Vernon can go. Worried and becoming anxious, she asked why Vernon was necessary. He told her that unless the island was somehow a barren land, with a witch who could control all sorts of deadly plants, being put on an isolated island was very useful. 

The ladies were up at the rooftop garden, checking in on Vernon and all the strays he had brought. 

When Dove quickly made her way up to the rooftop, she saw Liora, hands on her hips as the woman observed the animals exploring and walking around Vernon's garden. Vernon stood in front of her, hands behind his back as he waited for her to speak. 

"Is there an issue?" He asked.

"I know you must love your new friends," She began. "But we can't let them stay here forever."

"Why not? They might not have long to live, and if they do die, we should let them find their resting place here, where it's nice."

"We already had a vet check each of them, remember? They are predicted to still have a few years left, and even then, they can't spend it here. Not all of your furry friends can survive on fruit and vegetables alone."

"That's why I'm figuring out how to grow plants that have the same nutrition as meat."

"Do not test mother nature like this." 

Vernon held his head down in defeat, and Liora pat his shoulder. 

"We have a person who will be coming over to take them to a better rehabilitation place. I promise, your friends will be taken to a good place. For now, you should focus on your new assignment, I'm sure Dove has all the details for you." Liora said as she finished lecturing him. 

The lady never even looked behind her, even when Dove moved quietly. It scared her a bit yet also impressed her. 

Liora stepped aside as Vernon saw Dove who went over and told him what was going on. Surprisingly, Vernon did not show much fear, rather, he asked what types of plants were likely on the island. 

Dove could only shrug and say that there were likely lots of trees, considering how the four people had twigs and leaves in their hair and pieces of leaves stuck to them. 

He then asked if there were possibly any dead bodies at the island, or lots of people who died on the island. She nodded, wondering what he was thinking of, especially as he got excited and muttered about finally being able to use a new plant he learned how to control. He turned to Liora and asked for permission to go. She said yes and gently rushed him to go get what he needed before going with Dove on their new assignment. 

That and she wanted him and Dove to quickly go so that they didn't have to see her try and wrangle Lucia from chasing one of the possums. 

Annabelle met up with them as they made their way down. Calder and Callius were waiting downstairs, talking and catching up with Sienna and her boys. 

The three were dressed in black outfits like they just got back from a heist.

"Lucas was being a brat again. I had to stop him from sass-mouthing another guy and causing a fight." She joked, ruffling Lucas' hair as he stood beside her, pouting with his arms crossed. 

"I was drunk!" 

"Yeah, on rum cake."

"I don't have any blood in my body! Of course I'd get drunk off rum cake! There's barely anything to protect me from it!" Lucas rambled. 

Callius snickered at him. 

"And you did nothing to stop him?" Calder asked, turning to Mori who was checking his bag. 

"I was busy talking to another guy!" Mori said in a half-yell, voice cracking as he stopped himself from revealing too much. 

Callius' ear twitched and he turned to see the interns arrived. 

Laurence was just helping Merel carry her bag as they made a plan, and he showed her the compass that Adan made. 

"Where's the rambunctious one with the metal leg? Ah," Calder snapped his fingers to remember.

"Joon?"

"Enzo and Adan wouldn't grant him approval to go on this case." Dove answered, adjusting the sleeves of her shirt. 

I just realized that when I helped bring the people to Macabre House, I was wearing my black gym shirt and the new cargo pants I bought. The clothes were perfectly normal and didn't reveal much, but for some reason I felt naked, knowing I wasn't in my usual suit attire. 

I wasn't wearing my armor this time, and I felt insecure because I was lacking my outfit that helped me feel professional. 

"Well, probably for the best. He might get bored searching for an island."

"I don't know. He likes finding answers. How many islands are around Maine?"

"Three thousand."

"Oh."

"Yeah, imagine being in charge of inspecting as much of them as you can every year?"

They could not ask more questions as the four victims did not want to think about what they experienced, but Leon gave a detailed description of the wound that the woman had and that told enough. 

The large group took their own rides to the nearest docks. Laurence bought several boats, and the guy they met at the docks to help with the boat arrangements, seemed familiar with him. Another connection. 

"Why would you buy a boat instead of renting one? Are we gonna be spending more than one night in this island? Or multiple nights on the boat, tryna to find it?" Sienna asked. Her New York accent became more audible with every word.

The man in charge of the boats just laughed with his full chest as Laurence held a blank, quiet stare. 

"Listen, anything involving nightmares that can cause bodily harm, is most likely prone to causing property damage as well. I am not making any more mistakes like the last time we had to do a field case on water!" 

He refused to elaborate further. 

The boat instructor told them how to start the engines and how to drive them. 

The entire team soon left and agreed that all the other drivers would follow Laurence's boat as he figured out which direction to go based on the compass. 

"We could help search faster if we go into the water." Callius said, referring to him and his Siren partner. 

He rode in the same motorboat as Laurence and Ursa while others followed. 

"True but you have no idea what may be lurking in the water, if or when we get closer to the island. It'd be very inconvenient if the two of you went in, only to come floating to the bloody surface, chunks of flesh missing and parts of your bones picked clean." Ursa told him nonchalantly, arms crossed as she stayed seated. 

Laurence kept a careful eye on the compass the laid flat in his hand as Callius helped him steer. 

The arrow wobbled before suddenly pointing in one fixed direction. They had been going that direction for a few minutes until stopping when they suddenly came across a huge wall of a fog. No one noticed it until they were right at the edge, like it was a barrier that was designed to be invisible from a distance. 

Laurence had everyone stop, not knowing what was through the fog.

"Which islands are we closest to right now? We were only driving for a few minutes. Wait..." Sienna asked from the back, then her face frowned and she took out her phone.

"Everyone, check your clocks! Tell me what time its showing!"

Dove took her phone from her pocket and woke up the screen. She frowned in confusion.

"Seven p.m.!"

"Mine says five-thirty!" Annabelle responded right after, waving her phone up.

The time on Laurence's phone showed that it was two a.m., Mori's phone said twelve o'clock, and Lucas showed the watch on his wrist. The hands on the little clock wouldn't stop spinning.  

"Son of a cunt." 

Merel was sitting peacefully in the passenger seat, riding with Sienna's team in her boat. She flipped through her book, sifting through all the inky and smoky drawings before stumbling upon a bird-like entity, whispering to the page about finding out where they are and to search for a haunted island. 

"Heads and limbs down!" She warned as the bird entity was let out from the page that she pointed towards the sky.

It was like a mix between a black ash dusted phoenix, the terrifying face and size of a vulture, yet the silent feathers of a barn owl. It had a tail that was more like a mace, dangling from flesh and waving around as it flew.

The large bird entity flew through the fog, and soon after, Merel sent an aquatic nightmare entity to explore the waters below and around them. 

This creature looked like a starved mermaid with glowing yellow eyes. They weren't a beautiful glow like Vernon's eyes, more like they emitted light similar to the light emitted by a female angler fish.

"What was that?" Vernon asked, noticing the creature was dark, seaweed green all over. 

"Mal-De-Mer, or the evil version of a mermaid if you will." Merel answered, slowly flipping through more pages of her book as she waited for both creatures to report back. 

"Looks like a pretty fresh one too!" Annabelle said cheerfully as she looked over the boat, trying to see if she could spot the Mal-De-Mer's silhouette in the water. Calder gently pulled her back, warning her about something possibly jumping up.

"She didn't seem to have wrinkles or hair that was all split and coarse from salt water."

"Course not, she's been fed well ever since her capture." Merel told the kids casually. 

Ursa overheard and gave Merel an approving nod and a rare smile. 

"Oh, good, you're using the training method I taught you."

The two entities came back approximately seven minutes later. Laurence counted the time in his head as soon as he realized that all of their clocks had stopped functioning properly. 

The bird-like creature perched on the boat side next to Merel. Lucas scooted away. 

Only Merel could understand what the bird entity was saying, and just as she opened her book to the bird's designated page, putting them back after rewarding them with a treat from her purse, the Mal-De-Mer came back as well. 

The skeletal mermaid, as green as moss, spoke in noises similar to that of a dolphin, only difference being that the skeletal mermaid had longer whistling notes. 

She had the mermaid return back into the book as well, before telling everyone that the island they are searching for has a watchtower, and multiple other structures on it. The structures appear abandoned at first, but many human souls were detected. 

The island was just one more mile, or one-point-six kilometers away. The skeletal mermaid warned of moss in the waters, and the moss were far more alive than any normal vegetation. The moss seems to surround a good majority of the island, and it will reach out and snap at the engines of their boats should they come close. 

When they started driving again, Laurence asked for Calder to drive in front since Vernon was riding in his boat. 

They went past the fog, and the boy was told to ready himself.

The water past the fog barrier was darker, murkier, and not just the water, even the sky appeared darker, as if hours had gone by and the sun was going down. 

Then came ripples in the water as they noticed the land they were looking for, in the distance. 

Lucas could not help but take a picture of Vernon as he noticed the boy stand up and point to the island in the distance. He said that the boy suddenly reminded of a scene from one of his favorite animated shows. 

Calder told the boy to sit back down, and to stay sitting until it was time to leave the boat. Dove and Annabelle instead turned on the flashlights in their phones and helped shine lights into the water so that Vernon could see the ripples. 

Sure enough, the boat ride suddenly became rocky as they all felt movement coming from underneath. 

Moss was unfurling from the depths of the water and attempting to reach out and grab them by the motors. 

Vernon reached his hands out, first trying to sense for the moss plants and take control of them. Due to the water being a new environment that he never worked with, it was like searching blind. 

He took some dirt from his flowerpot and threw it into the water. There were seeds mixed into the dirt, and they grew rapidly soon after being put in the ocean, he willed them to do so. vines grew from the seeds, and he used those to combat the moss in the water. 

The boats ricked more, Vernon would ask the girls to shine lights in different directions, but the water only seemed to get darker, and so he was controlling his plants completely blind. It was like trying to arm wrestle in zero gravity and without a table.

Noticing the young witch's struggle, Merel searched for all the aquatic nightmares in her collection book and had them summoned from their respective pages. 

Skeletal fish and creatures with long fangs and necks jumped out of their pages and into the water, pushing the boats to move faster while the boy fought against the moss. 

Merel summoned more to fight against the moss with him, Callius contemplated jumping in the water to help, but Laurence advised him not to, saying they may need him to transform for a bigger emergency. 

By the time they made it to the shores of the island, Vernon hopped off the boat quickly, wobbled and nearly fell over before catching himself, and then beginning to pace around the shores of the beach. He recollected his thoughts and was walking off the bits of vertigo from the boat ride. 

Mori noticed the docks they could've properly parked at, and a 'Welcome' sign next to the docks. 

"We're definitely at the right place." He said. 

"Alright. we gotta keep this simple, find the survivors, find the person responsible, kill him, leave this island, and we'll find a more convenient time to deal with the nightmares here. Any issues?"

No one had any opposition, aside from Annabelle who was getting bored already. 

"Let's keep track of where we came from, so we don't get too lost." 

Ursa took a peculiar looking lighter and a few collars from her bag. She tossed the collars into the air and turned on the flame of her lighter. The entire little case beginning to glow from the grooves of the runes carved onto it, and she took a deep breath before blowing. 

She blew the fire into a large burst, like a flamethrower, hitting the collars as they fell. From the flames emerged her hellhounds who immediately went to work, sniffing the air and the ground.

Merel looked to the ocean and the docked boats, watching as each of her nightmare entities came back out from the water and she did a head count for each of them. Calder went to check on the interns and then paused, his body stilling as he listened, even the hellhounds began growling.

"Laurence, there's something coming, you should aim in that direction and shoot." He said blankly as he looked to a direction in the forest that greeted them immediately. 

The detective turned his head and noticed rustling in the trees. He took out a different handgun model than what he typically used and aim between the trees, waiting. 

The rustling got bigger, until a slight chalk white outline of eyes and a mouth could be seen in the distance.

*BANG*

It screeched, even though the mouth did not move but the face did bleed. No, that 'face' was revealed to be more like bait for onlookers, like the light from a female angler fish. 

The monster came fully out of the trees, the face revealed to be a fake, glowing part of a body that crawled upside down, stomach to the sky. It had extra limbs, making it appear as some spider made from human parts, and the dangling right-side-up head was attached to it by a long dangly neck that should not be strong enough to even hold a head up the way it did. 

"Run! I'll catch up!"

Mori lurched forward, shifting into a large wolf in the blink of an eye and launching himself at the quadrupedal entity. It screeched into the air as Mori chomped at its neck, and more rustling came from the trees.

"Oh, good. Its calling for its friends." Ursa said in a condescending tone.

The rest of the group ran, Sienna and Lucas looked over their shoulders to see Mori fighting the chimera-looking creature. Ursa stayed and dropped a long case she was carrying on her back. It had a crossbow inside. She turned to meet Sienna and Lucas' gaze, nodding for them to run. 

There was a trail right behind where the human spider came from, they followed that into the forest in the hopes of not getting lost. 

Laurence took the compass out of his pocket and checked it again. The red arrow was now spinning in all directions. 

Calder spoke up, telling them to watch for more nightmares in the woods that were watching them from afar. He could hear breathing and the footsteps of animals that had hooves. 

Vernon stood still and felt the ground, sensing for anything in the area. 

"Deer." He said blankly. 

"What?" Sienna asked. 

"Whatever you do, do NOT split up!" 

Footsteps made by hooves echoed through the forest and then came the multiple pairs of eyes appearing out of the dark. 

Deer do not have front-facing eyes. 

Vernon found the branches and moved them into a long, barrier of twisting branches to separate the deer from them. That triggered the deer. 

They reached through the crevices of the twisted branches with human-like hands, and stuck their snouts in as well, revealing fangs and drool as their pupils widened. The creatures didn't care if they got their antlers stuck, disturbing Vernon as he had more branches reach down and twist together to keep the deer from them. 

Annabelle shined her phone light in the direction of one of them. 

"Eldritch horror deer, classic." Lucas sighed wistfully, still pointing a phone up to take a picture of the snarling creatures. 

There was a whistle in the air, Callius and Calder covered their ears in pain. Vernon bent and extended more branches until he ended up caging them in, revealing more two-legged deer to be encircling them. 

The one that Annabelle kept flashing her light at, started moving its jaw, like it was reshaping its own skull until it muttered a phrase. 

"Coooommme... Heeeerrrreee." It wheezed its words into a slow oncoming hiss. 

Vernon grew vines from the ground to try and restrain them; he was becoming overwhelmed. 

"Oh, poor dear. That's enough for now, young man! You stop what you're doing and watch and learn from me." Merel said in a maternal voice to him, shrugging off her long, warm, windbreaker to reveal the backless dress she was wearing. The backless dress also a revealed a magic circle tattoo on her back, and more tattoos of different creatures and vines of thorny roses on her arm. 

"Alright, Vernon watch and learn from me. The rest of you go and find the captives, or kidnappers, the captives are likely dead already. Here! I'll give you a boost!" 

And without warning, inky black tendrils erupted from her back, reaching out to grab all but Vernon. 

"Wait-wait- Merel I SAID WE SHOULDN"T SPLIT UP!" Laurence panicked. 

"I know, but Vernon is getting overwhelmed, and I don't teach well with a human audience!" 

Merel merely gave a smile as she lifted everyone up and threw them further towards the center of the island. 

The men didn't even bother to yell, clearly this wasn't the first time for them, they just began to work on a landing strategy. 

Calder's hands grew and shifted, green scaled patches appeared on his skin and he grew claws. He reached out for the nearest tree mid-flight and hooked his hand onto it, catching himself and sliding down the tree by the claws of his hands. 

Callius thankfully got thrown at the perfect angle to hit a distant lake, as evidenced by the sound of a big splash and his screaming. 

Laurence took a pocketknife from his back pocket and stabbed that into a branch, groaning and coughed as he landed roughly on the large branch and pulled himself up.

"Dove! Annabelle!" He yelled, realizing they don't have a landing strategy.

Annabelle fell through a dark spot of trees and Dove fell in after her, but unfortunate for Dove, she was unable to see that the dark spot was filled with thin branches. Not strong or upright enough to stab through her, but also not strong enough to catch her fall. 

Her voice echoed with each groan, yelp, and sound of pain as she fell through each branch that broke from her impact, multiple branches hit her on the way down and she still did not fall slowly. 

The wind got punched out of her lungs by the time she hit the ground. Annabelle, just recovering from her fall, attempted to catch her but ended up collapsing underneath her as they both hit the ground.

The girls groaned in pain as Laurence safely slid down the tree he landed on, the blade of his knife now in the shape of a sickle and hooked into the wood, slowly slicing a long slit into its side as he safely descended. 

I saw the material of that pocketknife, bigger than other knives and with a very dark and shiny carbon steel blade. That was his baton, but the inactive shape was permanently changed into a melee weapon that suited him best. I wondered what my baton's dormant shape would be when I got more familiar to it.

"Don't get up too quick! Are you girls okay?!" Laurence ran over and checked on them, offering both a hand as he put his knife away.

"I've had worse." Dove answered blankly, one hand holding her side while the other hand reached for Laurence's. 

Annabelle still kept her smile but had tired eyes, showing she was affected and sore from the impact.

"I sincerely hope that's just sarcasm, but I'll drop that question for now." Laurence said with a frown as he slowly pulled both girls onto their feet and steadied them.

Then, at the sound of a twig snapping, they all snapped their focus to the one who heard the ruckus and came to check the source of it. They could see his face and his expression clear as day, even in the dark of the forest, timid-looking and nervously wary.

The young man stood frozen, holding his hands up to show he meant no threat. He was wearing hiking gear that was all muddy and a little baggy. He looked young, likely in his mid-20s. 

Laurence hovered a hand over the gun still in his holster as he stepped in front of the girls. 

The man noticed and spoke up with a shaky voice. 

"I'm not here to hurt you! That is- if, if you're not here to hurt me."

"Who are you? Why are you here?" Laurence asked. 

The man sighed, finding the words to answer with as he chuckled to himself in an exasperated tone, and in a way that person almost losing their mind would. 

"Just, someone who got conned, in the worst way ever. At least, that's how it's been feeling. You guys wouldn't have to be the police, would you?"

"No." Laurence answered back, hand still hovering over his gun holster as he began stepping closer to the man, cautiously. 

"But we did come here after hearing about a record of kidnappings, and then a huge lead about a haunted island."

"Haunted is right! This place has, well, all sorts of monsters! Ghosts, eldritch horror, giant freaks, you name it!" 

"... I'm going to reiterate. What is your name? How did you end up here? And, have you met any other survivors?"

The man gulped and still kept his hands up as he looked at Laurence with trembling eyes. 

"I'm, Simon. And, I came here with the impression that there was this amazing opportunity for a group event, like a hiking trip." He answered nervously. 

Dove stood close by Annabelle as the girl helped her with standing up, Annabelle was close enough to detect the hairs on Dove's neck stand up.

"Do you have a surname you might prefer to be addressed as?" She asked out of the blue. 

The man, Simon, shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck when he noticed Laurence begin to relax. 

"Ah, well, my last name is just Baker, and well, that's pretty boring. So, I'd just prefer Simon if that's alright with you?"

Dove didn't make eye contact with him, rather using the excuse that her whole body was sore to keep looking at the ground, not allowing him to see her expression clearly. 

"It's alright with me." She lied smoothly. 

Simon tilted his head as he looked at her. 

"Silver hair." He muttered. 

Laurence began asking him more questions, and Simon first suggested taking them to a cabin where he claimed to have taken temporary refuge in ever since getting taken to the island. Dove responded that they had two other people with them who fell in different areas, and she wanted to see where they were, but with how sore her body was from the fall, she could not move much. 

Laurence noticed this, checked his phone for any signal, and suggested to Dove that they should get somewhere safe so her and Annabelle could recover. He told her that they'd be able to go out and meet back with the two gentlemen afterwards. 

Getting to the cabin proved to be just a short walk from Dove's crash site. On the way there, Simon talked about how lucky they were that he'd found them after hearing a big amount of noise. 

He told Laurence that he was brought to the island a couple days ago after seeing some event online for a trip to explore a newly purchased island with other people. 

"Turns out it was a scam, and a kidnapping scheme! I gave them my credit card info, and they got a sucker who walked right into their palms! Like, like everyone else here on this island." He said sheepishly. 

"And what happened when you came here?" 

"Well, kinda like what definitely must've happened to you guys! Monsters attacked us soon after we arrived! Our-our phones didn't work all of a sudden, and the boats that brought us to this place, they left as soon as they dropped us off." Simon said with a sad face, and a frustrated tone, shaking his head. 

"It was the worst welcome ever."

Then, he raised his head and his face lit up.

"Oh! Hey! We made it back!" He said, pointing to the cabin in the distance. It looked like a large wooden shack of sorts but with a sturdier structure, and cleaner looking wood planks.

He rushed over, opened the wooden door, and ushered for all of them to hurry inside, smiling as he saw Dove enter last with Annabelle helping her, and he closed the cabin door behind him. 

"I should show you guys what I found, since you're all here."