#intrepidscribbles

“Right, priorities,” Jim said and shook off the impending doom of another failed grade. Quickly, the pair of them raced to the school entrance before Rachel turned around to face him.

“Okay, I’m going to go get Mr. Douglass. You find Mr. Paine and tell him what’s happening.”

“Got it,” Jim answered and hurried off toward the planetarium.

“Watch your back!” Rachel called after him before heading down the main halls and out of sight.

Of all the days a Tenebris could’ve attacked it had to be this one! His mother was going to flip when she saw his report card and he doubted Mr. Douglass or Mr. Paine would be able to talk him out like last time. Jim huffed as he ran across the schoolyard lawn, the Lumen amulet in his pocket glowing with his mounting anxiety. But he couldn’t transform just yet. If he did, the Tenebris would know where he was and get the jump on him, and that was the last thing he needed!

Pushing those thoughts aside, Jim skidded to a halt at the Planetarium door when a deafening shockwave erupted from the building, knocking him off his feet. For a minute everything was upside down or was it inside out? Whatever it was, it didn’t last and left him groaning on the ground. His ears rang and his head felt like smashed watermelon, which wasn’t helped by the people yelling and running around him from the planetarium. Dazed, Jim pushed himself up onto his elbows as two of kids from school rushed to his side.

“Jim!” they called, their voices slightly distorted by the ringing in his ears.

“He’s dazed,” said a girl with dark hair and colored barrettes. “The trickster troll must’ve hit him hard when he got out.”

A broad kid with braces and copper red hair clutched at his shoulder and helped him sit up. “Don’t worry Jim, we’ve got ya.”

Jim blinked, looking between the two of them. How were they so calm? Everyone else was running and screaming in panic. Were they Lumen Knights too? Couldn’t be, he’d never seen them in training or in the after-school service program.

“Um, thanks but who—“ His question was cut off by a familiar roar in the distance. “Oh, no.”

The other two students seemed to share his sentiment as the looked at each other and then at the direction the roar came from. What was worse was that the darkened rain clouds Jim and his sister were trying to out run were suddenly gathering around the school; a classic sign of the Tenebris storm call. However, despite the sudden storm, the braces kid seemed to brighten up and even hop to his feet in excitement as he waved at someone behind them.

“Aaarrrggh!” he called and opened his arms wide as an enormous behemoth of stone and moss slowed to a stop beside them.

Jim stared in bewilderment as the copper-haired student gave the stone giant a hug before laying out the situation. At first glance, the beast looked like it could’ve been from the Telumin kingdom, but it was too friendly. Or maybe that’s just how Telumin treated their friends?

“Aaarrrggh, Jim got hit in the head pretty hard,” the braces kid announced to the green-furred giant.

The dark haired girl nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I think he might have a concussion which means he probably can’t fight—“

“So we really gotta get out of here!” the braces kid finished.

“Yes, go now!” the giant agreed and scooped the copper-haired kid up onto its back.

“Indeed!” came another voice, startling Jim as a more familiar blue-stone creature with six eyes and four arms came running up to them. “This storm is anything but natural and likely one of the trickster troll’s antics!”

“Bluzeal?” Jim mumbled to himself, squinting to make sure it was the Terulumin researcher he was looking at. Everyone, including the blue stoned creature, turned to him with a look of confusion and concern. The stone creature looked like Bluzeal but had none of his usual glow. Something inside told him this wasn’t the Terulumin he knew and sprouted a hint of fear in his pounding heart.

“What?” the blue creature asked, looking down at him with concern. “Master Jim, are you quite alright?”

The braces kid sighed with exasperation. “He just got rolled right off a roof, Blinky. Of course, he’s not alright!”

“We need to get him down to Trollmarket,” interjected the barrette girl, “we’ll be able to regroup there.”

The blue giant opened his mouth to agree but stopped when an earth shattering roar shook the ground. Anyone who wasn’t familiar with it might’ve thought it was thunder, but Jim recognized it as the battle cry of the tenebris he’d been trying to stop.

The braces kid yelped and patted at the mossy giant. “Uhhh run now, talk later!” he shouted and held tight as the giant scooped up the remaining two teens and began to run.

Jim let out a yell of alarm as he was scooped up and deposited on the giant’s back next to the braces kid. But even more alarming was the fact that when he looked back, he could see himself standing across the schoolyard, in blue and silver armor, as the hulking spiked form of Dragar Light-Hunter loomed over him...

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The sight made Lierosa miss having her fourth arm. There was no way she could out run them as she was, but without her fourth arm, she couldn’t use her weight-lite belt and keep a grasp on the stone! But she had to use the belt or it’d be all for naught! With a quick glance down at the stone an idea occurred to her and for a moment, she hoped she wouldn’t choke on her possibly last actions.

Lifting her mask, the warrior stuffed the treasure into her mouth, clamping her jaws around the stone to keep it steady, before pulling the mask back over her face. She then reached down and twisting the gem-studded dial on her belt until a only a blue gem shown in its golden case. In a moment she was almost weightless, allowing her to leap and propel herself farther from her gruesome hunters. As she did, an urgent pressure in her chest shook her bones like a hammer to a gong, as a sudden light appeared above one of the Outlands towering obsidian geysers. Rorgan!

‘There!’ she thought, twisting the golden dial to a heavier black stone to slow and lower herself, before turning back to the blue. Twisting herself around, Lierosa kicked off the ground toward the geyser. Even as wraiths flew over her, clawing to get hold of her, the Illumine warrior continued on. Slow, lift, kick. Slow, lift, kick. Slow, lift, slash, kick. Slow, lift, kick.

Lierosa huffed and panted against her mask, her eyes focused on the geyser peak. Just one more leap and she’d be able to escape the Outlands, rescue the prince, and get him and the treasure to safety! But as she made to take the final jump, something hot and sharp struck her side, sending her careening into the lip of the geyser. A sword fell from her grasp as she coughed, choking on the stone she’d fought so hard to obtain. The illumine clutched the geyser’s edge as she gagged, lifting her mask and horking up the small stone into her hand. Tears beaded in her eyes as she coughed again, her throat stinging and her side screaming from the thick black arrow shaft still lodged in her stony flesh.

“Lierosa! Stop!” called familiar voice. “You’re only hurting yourself and the family! Please, I know you’re upset with me but your fighting is only making it worse!”

Shock and fury boiled in Lierosa’s veins as she looked up, spotting the cloaked silhouette of Jemyer  the Treasonous. A thick mane of auburn was pulled back in a loose braid, half obscured by his dark hood, while inky black designs trailed down his dull-red adobe skin. In one set of hands, he held the reigns of a mangy, four-legged black vulture, with his companion, a prune-colored archer riding a second. A bow was held in the other rider’s lithe hands, a second black arrow notched against its string.

“You and I both know the hunter isn’t after Rashelle,” he said, landing his violent steed on one side of Lierosa, with the archer landing on the other. “Just give me the stone and I can save her! I can stay the Betrayer’s hand and maybe make room for you to find safety too!”

The Illumine pulled herself up against the geyser’s mouth and bared her teeth as the traitor’s mount shrieked and snapped its beak, jerking at the reigns around it’s face as the Jemyer pulled them back. Her inner stone burned as he spoke, acting like he was the gallant hero in some little play of his. But he knew the hunter was after their daughter and the prince. He knew they were in danger and yet here he was lecturing her that he knew how to keep their daughter safe when he was helping the very side that turned the Betrayer into the beast he was!

“No!” she bellowed back, pushing herself to her feet. “No, you don’t want to save Rashelle. You want to give your lies credence so you can force her back into your arms to use and abuse her just as you did when you were banished!” 

Lierosa sheathed her remaining sword and unclipped the Weight-Lite belt from her waist. Keeping her stark blue eyes fixed on her former partner, she slipped the stone into a pouch on the belt and forced herself to stand tall.

“I will not let my daughter fall prey to the likes of you! ,” she said and lifted the belt over her head. “Ite, et custodiat Princeps lucem et protegere filia mea!”

Realizing what was happening, Jemyer shouted, his steed surging forward to catch the belt, but neither were in time to stop the defiant warrior as she threw it into the belly of the geyser. Light burst forth from the mountain’s maw as the magic within the stone mixed its waters and vanished in a spray of glistening white water. Lierosa sank to her knees holding her punctured side as she rested her head against the obsidian peak.

The stone was gone, the belt was gone, but though she could not join them, she knew that they would return to the human Terlumin kingdom and provide her daughter what she needed to stay alive and keep the hope of the Illumine kingdoms alive.

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So it started in modern day with me and my family living in this house and apparently living there for years.

Over that time, we became really good friends with the husband of this couple next door, and one day it was discovered that he'd contracted a life-threatening illness that if he survived, would leave him in worse shape than my step-dad. So me and my mom's cousin, Ruth, got him on her motorcycle (apparently a thing in the dream??) to go to the hospital bc the quickest way was too narrow for normal cars. Well, she ended up taking me and my neighbor through this back way, across cobblestone streets and through side bushes toward the hospital.

However, while we were on our way, the path went along the edge of a cliff and I ended up falling off the motorcycle and falling into an icy ocean. My family & neighbor's wife found out and went in to rescue me,  and we all ended up washed up against this big black cliff. We tried to find a way out of the freezing water but the only thing we found was a large circular drain grate just under the water's surface.

By this time, I was actually in a kind of lagoon trapped behind the grate trying to get out (bc I'd somehow been pulled under into a natural tunnel by an under current). My mom and the neighbor's wife ( who was super strong despite being a really skinny Asian looking gal) managed to break the bars and peel them back. However it was too cold for us to swim back to the mainland. So we opted to follow the lagoon and explore the inner cave I was in. (This is where it starts feeling like we walked into the Golden Compas movie).

As it happened there was a kind of natural doc made of the same craggy black stone as the cliff side, so we climbed onto that and discovered bars forming a ladder to a big drain pipe above. We climbed our way in in hopes of finding a way out, and found ourselves climbing through this big building that doubled as both a factory and a kind of weird cult-like base. It had some serious Magisterium vibes, and apparently, they were doing brainwashing hocus pocus on these kids who'd been sent to as apprentices to learn from these guys since they were presumably "powerful" and "well-learned". Everyone there had to undergo an initiation before being allowed to work in the factory (presumably to "earn" their education??).

Well, we managed to make it to the ground floor and find an exit. however, that exit was stuck behind another grate (which the neighbor lady bent just like the first one) that led to a "sewage" pipe. No one was happy about this, especially my mom, but they all went through the pipe to get out of the building. But while my mom was getting into the pipe, I got impatient with how slowly everyone was crawling and, not wanting to be caught, went to go find a quicker way outside. I found one, but it was connected to a set of conveyor belts and when I tried to get through it, the conveyor belts would switch and the exit would be on the opposite side of the room.

By the time I realized I couldn't get out that way, the boys I'd seen in the initiation room were coming and I knew I'd be found out. So I tried to blend in and get back to the backroom and escape. But the warden lady was there and was watching everyone - including me, and somehow I knew that if I stayed in the room too long, she'd get suspicious and send in people after me, thus exposing my escape tunnel and possibly getting me captured along with my fam if they didn't get clear. So I tried to get to the room without her noticing - only to find that each time I went into the room, it changed and a machine was now blocking the grate.

To make matters worse, the cult leaders were coming down to inspect the work. So I do the most logical thing. I hide behind a big steel door. brilliant right? Well I end up being found by one of their acolytes who turns out to be an old friend of mine that I thought had moved to private school. Turns out she and the boys I saw didn't want be being initiated bc they knew these guys weren't good guys and tried to help me by pretending I was this lore figure the cult leaders all feared, the "White".

My friend sounded the alarm, I stepped forward and pulled my white hood forward (bc I apparently was wearing a white hooded robe now) and played along. The boys pretended to be mind controlled and tried to be a distraction so I could get away, but it didn't work. The head cult-leader literally just pushed them off like they were nothing. When I saw the ploy wasn't working, I tried to bolt toward the back room, only to be grabbed and restrained from behind by one of the dark-robed cult members.

That was when the main dream ended but it continued in little mini dreams I had as I tried to get back to sleep (bc it ended at like 4 in the morning).

In the mini dreams, the cult leader unhooded me to find that I was just a girl and not the great "White" as he thought. (The dream kept switching between me as a redhead in a blue and white dress, and this pale skinny girl with long black hair and big black-brown eyes so idk what i really looked like.) But in the mini dreams, they caught me and brought me to this room with a table and a candle in the middle of it, and began asking why I was there and why I pretended to be the "White".

I tried to answer honestly without diminishing my chances of escape. So, I told them how I'd been on my way to the hospital to say goodbye to a dying friend when I fell into the winter ocean and got swept away to the lagoon under their tower and worked to find my way out and I pretended to be the "White" to spook anyone away so I could find and use the exit to get out.

Each time I misspoke or lied, the candle flame would turn blue and one of the cult members (who looked like professor Quirrell from the Harry Potter movies) would shout at me to tell the truth. Finally, I decided that since I couldn't lie, I just wouldn't answer the questions that would've led me to exposing my friends, family, or neighbor’s wife.

When they can't get the whole truth out of me, the Magister (head of the cult) mentioned how unfortunate it was and said that since I wasn't willing to tell them the full truth, that they'd have to keep me there until I did. It kind of did a weird fuzzy thing where it glimpsed over me getting this symbol  ➵  tattooed on my right forearm, marking me as the new property of the cult and assigning me servant duties to one of the cult heads (a tall, pale man who was mostly shaved except for a patch of hair on the back of his head that was tied back with a pony tale) as punishment for my intruding. (The only method I can think of them using on the dream!me is one a friend of mine brought up called “stick-and-poke” so that’s gonna be the method I assume they went with.)

To add to this though, the tattoo was apparently magical and if I displeased or disobeyed the cult leader in charge of me, he could cause it to burn excruciatingly as a punishment. Punishments included speaking out of turn, not doing my new duties as their servant, or straying too far from the spellcaster. At this point, I’m firmly of the opinion that they did it not only to see if they could pry more information out of me later, but also to keep me quiet without killing me because I’d “seen too much.”

Also, for the cult leaders, they all wore similar hooded robes that were black velvet that shimmered either blue, mauve, prune, or maroon, and were accented with gold patterns/embroidery. Below are some of the closest fcs I could find to the cult leaders in the dream.

The young writer yelped, almost dropping her phone as she brought it down to see what had called her. “Who’s there!?” she demanded before adding fiercely, “you show yourself or I’m calling the cops!”

Unclipping her swiss army knife from her black phannypack, Tara flicked out it’s tiny knife and held it and her phone at the ready. Oh, how she wished she’d should’ve brought the flashlight baton given to her by her stepdad. A good clubbing would show any mugger she wasn’t some cheap chick to be dealing with, and a recorded video would make sure her family could prosecute anyone she caught on it who meant her harm.

However, as she flicked her phone’s flashlight hither and thither to see if anyone was hiding behind the bridge pillars, the ghostly voice once again called out.

“Tara Bryn.”

All eyes and lens focused on the pile of rubble. Was someone pranking her? Had her cousins somehow found out where she was staying for the night and set this up?

‘No way,’ she thought, shaking her head, ‘This place isn’t even near the coast, let alone Oakland. There’s gotta be something else going on.’

‘Something like ghosts?’ nudged a little thought in the back of her head. Shadows of the past threatened to force their way up but she shook herself and knelt down by the pile of stones. She didn’t need to be thinking about that. Instead, she cautiously began digging through the rubble to see just how far whoever set this up would go for a prank.

What she found wasn’t a Walk-the-Prank walkie-talie but the most amazing amulet she’d ever seen. Eyes wide and shoulders relaxing, Tara Bryn folded the blade of her keychain multitool, clipped it back onto her belt and picked up the silver piece of art. It’s crystal shone like sapphire or a blue opal, gently glinting beneath the ornate silver clockwork.

“Oh my gosh,” she breathed, running her hand over it’s smooth faceted surface. “Oh man, this is beautiful!” Her heart almost fluttered holding such a piece. This was definitely not a prank or a dump pile. Noone she knew would ever throw away a treasure like this.

Without a second thought, the young woman grabbed her phone and took pictures of the amulet, flicking over her screen to the discord server she and her family shared. 

“You guys won’t believe what I just found,” she wrote and went to send the picture when something clacked somewhere across the canal. Alarmed, the young woman stood up, clutching her phone and the amulet close.

It sounded like the clackhad come from one of the drain pipes. The grate bars were too small for a person to hide in. A rat or raccoon maybe? Cautiously, the redhaired approached the grate and nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone alarm rang throughout the canal. But as she looked to turn it off and see what it was for, panic bolted through her.

Get to the Pitch Meeting!!

“Oh no, I’m gonna be late!” She shrieked and raced to climb out of the canal. “My one chance to pitch a show and I miss it over a pile of busted rocks!”

Opening his gun case with a click, Murray lifted a shotgun from its wrack and weighed it in his arms. It was an intimidating weapon to be sure, and if the former cop remembered anything from his days on the streets, it was that intimidation won a lot more battles than brute force alone. Quickly, the reached inside the drawer under the case and pulled out a case of shotgun shells, loading his weapon before whoever or whatever was outside got any ideas.

With another quiet click, he closed the gun case and stepped out into the hall towards the door. Consciously, he knew there was a chance that the shadowy figure outside wasn’t related to anything he did in the precinct; that it was just some neighbor passing by or some moron would-be burglar thinking of breaking in. But with how many enemies he made as a copper, he wasn’t willing to stop and find out. If there was someone skulking around his property, he wanted them off as soon as possible.

However, as he approached the door, he couldn’t help the shiver up his spine that sent goosebumps down his arms. James gritted his teeth and pressed the butt of his firearm to his shoulder. Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t feel right, and if Harsworth were there, he’d tell him “If it don’t feel right, chances are, it ain’t.” But he pressed on. The safety of his family was at stake and he wasn’t going to let some hokey boogey man scare him out of protecting them.

Taking a breath, James undid the locks and opened the front door, checking each direction before stepping onto the front porch. The night was quiet. Even the usual sound of crickets and frogs had fallen into eerie silence. He furrowed his brow and peered into the darkness. Frogs and crickets didn’t just stop making noise in the middle of the night - especially on a hot muggy day in June. Something was definitely wrong.  

He’d only had just enough time to formulate the thought when he felt something strike him from the side. He fell to the ground with a grunt and writhed as whatever struck him ground his head harder into the beach wood porch. Startled and alarmed, Murray tried maneuver his gun to shoot whatever it was holding him down, but as he did, he could feel long, slender fingers curling around his arms and wrists, pinning him and his weapon to the ground.

‘How many people are on me?’ he thought, both terrified and astounded by their silence and stealth. But then something occurred to him. The things pressed against his face, blocking his vision… they were fingers. Long, white, slender fingers with maybe a faint amount of slime seeping onto his skin, and he could feel the same dampness slowly spreading from where his arms were being held. No human could have fingers like that. Which meant….

“W̶ell͝, ͘wel̛l, wéll. Lo͜ơks͝ li̕k͘e I ͢fin̡al̴ly̢ ͡fo̸u͡n͞d y͘où, Mr͟. ͝Mu͞rr͟ay̨.͏”

James felt his blood run cold as the monster’s low voice gurgled softly above his head. It was almost a croon really. An icy, bone chilling croon that made death look like a sweet summer dream. He swallowed and squeezed his eyes closed as it continued.