The Dreamwalker
Cass walked through the woods behind the pack house, completely naked.
He didn’t remember taking his clothes off. He didn’t remember deciding to go outside. The night air felt wrong against his fur, just too still, too heavy. The moonlight was pale and cold, casting everything in shades of silver and deep blue. Even the usual sounds of the forest were missing. No insects. No wind. Just silence. Silence that felt like it was screaming.
He kept walking anyway.
Up ahead, the ground suddenly trembled, shaking his midnight black thighs, making his footsteps unstable.
Cass stopped, ears perking. The earth buckled and split as something massive began to rise from the dirt. Trees toppled sideways with loud cracks as a huge, white stone structure forced its way upward. It grew rapidly, ancient and imposing, glowing with the same inner light he had seen in the underwater Temple.
A new Temple.
Cass stared at it for a long moment, then started walking toward it.
As he approached, several of the white stone guardians emerged from the structure. They moved without hurry, their void-like faces turned toward him. Cass didn’t resist when two of them stepped forward and fastened something cold and heavy around his cock and balls. A cage. Another guardian clipped a thick stone leash to a collar that had suddenly appeared around his neck.
He was led inside without a word.
The interior was vast. Massive stone walkways spiraled upward along the inner walls. The guardians guided him higher and higher until they reached a small, bare room near the top. There was only one window, looking out over the dark woods and, far below, the lights of the pack house.
They shoved him inside and left.
Cass immediately went to the window and tried to shout.
“Roan! Kiran! Zariel!”
His voice didn’t carry. Down below, he could see his pack moving around outside the house like nothing was wrong. They couldn’t see the Temple. They couldn’t hear him.
Hours passed. Then days.
The guardians returned periodically. They would force him onto his stomach on the cold stone floor and pin him there with their smooth, heavy hands. One would always rest on the back of his neck. Another on his lower back. A third on his ass. They kept him there for hours at a time while dust motes drifted down from the ceiling and made him cough.
He was always hungry. Always cold. The cock cage stayed on, and after the first day, he stopped getting hard at all. The stone floor was unforgiving. His muscles ached. His mind started to drift.
One of the guardians finally spoke, its voice echoing directly inside his head.
“The Temple is glad you came.”
Cass tried to lift his head, but the hand on his neck pressed down harder.
Something cold and sharp touched the base of his skull.
A stone knife.
“We will need to collect the brain,” the guardian said calmly.
Cass’s entire body went rigid with terror. He felt the blade begin to press in....
The wall beside him exploded inward.
Stone and dust flew everywhere as a massive figure burst through. Roan. His golden eyes were blazing as he charged into the room, hands already moving in strange, deliberate patterns. Arcane symbols flickered in the air around his claws.
The guardians rose to meet him, but Roan slammed his palms together and snarled something under his breath. The white stone figures cracked and crumbled into pieces before they could even reach him.
Roan crossed the room in three strides and hauled Cass up off the floor. With one powerful motion, he grabbed the cock cage and crushed it in his fist, breaking it apart and freeing Cass’s genitals. Cass sagged against him, shaking.
“This… this isn’t real…” Cass whispered hoarsely.
Roan held him steady, one arm around his waist.
“No,” he said quietly. “It’s mostly not real.” He looked Cass in the eyes. “But I am.”
Cass stared at him, confused and exhausted.
Roan didn’t give him time to process it. He pulled Cass toward the door. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
They made it down several levels before Cass stopped at one of the open archways. Something had caught his eye through the window. He moved closer, his wolf vision cutting through the strange mist that surrounded the Temple.
Out in the distant woods, barely visible through the haze, stood a tall, dark silhouette.
An elk.
It was staring directly up at the Temple. Directly at them. One of its legs seemed to be made out of mist, incorporeal.
Roan followed his gaze and went still.
“There’s the bastard,” he muttered. His voice was low and dangerous. “C’mon, Cass. We’re leaving.”
Cass woke up with a violent gasp, bolting upright in bed.
The room was dim, lit only by a few candles. Kiran, Zariel, and Khepri were all gathered around his bed. Strange incense burned in small bowls, and there were other bowls filled with warm, dark liquid placed around the room. Some kind of ritual.
Roan stumbled into the doorway a second later, looking like he had just woken up himself. His fur was messy and his eyes were still heavy with sleep.
“Cass,” Roan said, voice rough. “You okay?”
Cass looked around at all of them, heart still hammering. “What… what the fuck was that?”
Roan stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He reached out and gently pulled Cass into his arms, holding him tightly.
“You were trapped in a dreamwalk,” Roan explained quietly. “An Elk. Or a Deer. Something with that kind of power. They can walk in dreams. Pull people in. Keep them there.”
Kiran was sitting cross-legged on the floor nearby, looking unusually serious. “We could feel you panicking through the link. But we couldn’t reach you. Roan had to force his way in.”
Roan nodded. “I slept right next to you and used an old incantation. It let me break into the dream.” He pulled back slightly so he could look at Cass. “Normally, dreamwalkers can only mess with your head. Psychological damage. Nightmares. But this one felt… different. More solid. Like it was trying to keep you there for real.”
Cass swallowed. His throat felt dry. “There was an elk. In the woods. Watching the Temple.”
Roan’s expression darkened. “Yeah. I saw him too.”
But nothing showed up on any perimeter cameras, and the territory had many. The Elk had stood only in the dream.
The pack eventually moved to the living room. Someone had put on an episode of House, but no one was really watching it. The volume was low, the blue light from the TV flickering across their faces as they sat together on the couches and floor.
Cass was curled up against Roan’s side, still wrapped in a blanket. Kiran was pressed against his other side, tail curled around Cass’s leg like he needed the contact. Zariel and Khepri sat across from them.
“So what do we do about this?” Khepri asked eventually. “If there’s some dreamwalking elk out there targeting Cass…”
“We stay sharp,” Roan said. “And we don’t let him get isolated again. Keep the link at twenty percent so we can feel Cass.” He looked down at Cass. “You feel anything strange in your head right now?”
Cass shook his head. “No. Just… tired. And pissed off.”
Kiran spoke up after a moment. “While we’re talking about weird shit… I ran into that fennec in the woods earlier. Remi.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Kiran told them about the encounter: how Remi had snuck up on him, the conversation, the fight, and how Remi had put a knife to his balls. He left out how turned on he had gotten during it, but the smirk on his face gave him away anyway.
"I don't like him putting a blade to my fox's balls," Roan said. "Even in jest, he could slip up. I should talk to the council..."
"No, no, he's cool, Alpha. He has amazing control and he's not like that. It's just stainless steel anyway, I'd regenerate if something happened. Might not feel as sexy as Zariel's mouth on my balls, but it wouldn't be the end of anything," Kiran laughed.
“He’s a virgin,” Kiran said bluntly. “And he’s got some serious trauma. Oh shit, I never told you this... His village got wiped out when he was a kid. He never got to learn magic like the rest of his people. He’s… kind of a mess, honestly. But he’s hot. And he’s alone out there.”
Zariel grunted. “Sounds like half the resistance.”
“I asked about Lir,” Kiran continued. “The void mark. Apparently Lir’s got more than just an innate ability. Remi said he’s got actual void power in his blood. Like Nox. Like maybe Cass. But Lir wasn’t transformed like you were. The Void Tear was used on him for something else.”
Cass frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
Kiran shrugged. “Remi wouldn’t say. Just that it takes some kind of ‘anomaly’ to get ‘infected’ by the void. And that we shouldn’t push Lir about it. It seemed to revolve around the Tear.”
Roan was quiet for a while, staring at the TV without really seeing it.
“Dreamwalkers and void-touched people showing up at the same time…” he muttered. “This isn’t a coincidence.”
Cass looked up at him. “You think the elk is working with Nox?”
“I don’t know yet,” Roan admitted. “But we need to find out. Fast. And we have more trouble, you remember the underwater temple?”
Cass nodded.
"Well, Nox invaded the trial seekers party. He outnumbered them the council says, he had several strong allies with him, a white tiger, a panther... with green eyes... Nobody was hurt, Nox'Thar apparently spared everyone there, he just wanted to have the temple trials to himself."
"Maybe the bastard will DIE in there. How can he survive running it like five times or whatever," Kiran said.
"Nah, it's not like that," Roan added. "Nox can no longer run the trials himself, he's had his fill, the temple would kill him for trying, but his underlings can run it. He's doing everything he can to strengthen his forces, and if it's true he is bringing creatures from the Void... it's going to be bad. Those creatures are not meant to be in our world, Void magic isn't either, it belongs on the other side..."
Cass looked nervous, his Void eyes glowing purple. A thin ring of purple energy in the middle of his dark eyes.
"That panther with green eyes... I wonder if that's the one that helped us during that attack in town awhile back?" Kiran asked.
"I think so," Roan says, "But he's very close to Nox. So that doesn't add up."
The room fell into a thoughtful silence, broken only by the low murmur of the TV.
Outside, the woods were quiet.
But somewhere out there, something was watching.
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