The Gods

 My mother always told me I'd serve the Gods someday. She'd pick me up and say "Alex, you and I are part of a long line of avatars. The power that holds Estellia together flows through your veins the same way it does mine. Someday you will wield a bit of power from the gods, if not become an avatar of the gods yourself." 

     There are four gods in Estellia, one for each race, except for humans of course. All of the gods gain power from their respective bloodline. I'm proud of my bloodline, but I don't think it's proud of me. 

  We do our best to respect the gods where I live. Disrespecting a human may bring you power, disrespecting a Nightmare will bring you pain, and disrespecting a god will mean the end of your days after all. Ever since I was little my parents have drilled into me that you absolutely, positively, can't screw up around a god. Because unless you're a god yourself, you won't live to see the next day. 

   

    My mother always told me to attack humans if I needed more power for whatever reason. She'd tell me, "Humans are always weak, and most of them are little more than cowards. If you attack them, they can't do anything to you. I can't say the same about any Nightmares you'll wind up facing. I don't care how weak they appear to be, they might be a Midnight Nightmare hiding their true strength for all you know. Don't risk it, and never anger another Nightmare."

   It's true that most, if not all, of the humans in the valley are weak. Most of the one's I've talked to say they've moved here for opportunity, then got trapped by labor laws. They all hate me. I don't have to worry about homelessness and loneliness the way they do. 

   Attacking humans makes me nervous though. Not only is there always the risk that they could be a Midnight Nightmare in disguise, there's always the possibility that they could go lucid. 

   I didn't know lucidity was a thing until Cassie showed me. It was just after Halloween, when nightmares are at their most powerful. My mother had heard about the strange human child who was entering our dreamlands borders, and told me to get rid of her, "Even someone like you should be able to do that." she said. 

   I didn't want to, of course. Cassie's the only person in all of Estellia who thinks I'm a nightmare of any sort of worth, though I don't know why she thinks that I'm one of the gods. I assume it's because she hasn't seen any of them up close the way I have. 

  I saw her enter the dreamland and moved to her spot the way my mother taught me. I'm not the strongest nightmare in the heartland, much less Estellia, but I know all of the standard tricks. I let off an attack, but she blocked it effortlessly. I wouldn't have found it strange, except she started glowing when she did it. 

   "What the heck was that?!" I said.

   "I went lucid to counter your attack." She said. She seemed to think I should already know that.

   "What do you mean you went lucid?" I asked.

   "It's when you remember that everything within the Infinite isn't real, so as long as you're in the Infinite or one of the dreamworlds." 

   "So you just change dreamworld willy-nilly. That's against the rules. You could be put in prison, or killed." I said.

    She looked at me like I was being stupid, "Alex, those rules only apply to Nightmares. They don't apply to humans. If I never become a Nightmare, the ones in charge can't do anything to me, so I can do whatever I want."

   I was about to say that wasn't true, but then I remember mother saying that one of the only things humans have over us was that they don't have to live under the laws, "Not that that's much of a blessing." 

   "What are you doing here?" I asked.

   "The same thing you're doing. I'm trying to pass the time until I wake up tomorrow."

    "Why are you sleeping to pass the time? Shouldn't you be at work or something?"

    Cassie looked panicked. "I should be. You won't tell anyone will you?"

    "Why aren't you working now?"

    "Because I have this issue where I need to sleep. If I don't sleep for more than three days, I collapse. If I collapse, then I might not wake up again for a week, and when I do wake up I stop being able to stay awake for more than about ten hours in a row."

    I'd heard this story a lot. Humans in the heartland often fake weakness to try and gain more power than they deserve. "Have you been tested for weakness?" I said, knowing I'd catch her.

   "No. I don't think it's weakness. With weakness you get really hungry and thirsty. I just get really sleepy. I know it looks at lot like it, but it's not the same thing. I wish I could explain that to my parents." 

   "No offense, but it doesn't sound like it's not weakness. I didn't get all that hungry until my mother started having me eat dinner with the rest of the family. Actually, it's not that I wasn't hungry, I just didn't realize how much I wanted food until I ate it, then I couldn't seem to stop."

   "Don't you eventually lose control of yourself if you deprive yourself of your weakness for too long? I don't fight for food when I don't eat. I don't think I've ever eaten a thing in my entire life, though I did have some coffee once. I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. It did help me stay awake, but I didn't like going to the bathroom afterwards. There's only one bathroom in the entire village, and nobody uses it so it never gets clean."

    I shuddered. My family and I all have weakness, so we all eat regularly. We have two bathrooms in the house and my mother and father insist on them being cleaned every day. 

   "Hey Alex," Cassie said, sounding like she was scared. "Don't get mad, but I think my parents are going to want to wake me up soon. I'll be back at some point." 

  "Okay." I said. "See you in a bit."

   I was walking back to village, the fake one my parents made for the locals to gather in the dreamworld, when one of my father's colleagues walked up to me. "Did you scare her off?" He asked.

   I realized that I'd been so focused on talking to Cassie that I'd forgotten to do that. "No." I said.

   He got big all of a sudden. Most monsters transform into their nightmare forms, but my father and his gang just get bigger to scare weak humans. "Why not?" He said.

   I could have told him the truth, but at that moment I suddenly realized that I didn't need to scare Cassie away. She was a human, but she'd just demonstrated that she wasn't weak. She was, after all, the only human I'd met who didn't play by the rules she wasn't required to follow any way. So I said, "I didn't want to."

   I think he tried to attack me. I don't really remember. What I do remember is pain, followed by red hot anger, ending with me standing over an unconscious man. I woke up, terrified, knowing that mother and father would see to it that I was punished, and dreading it.

  Miraculously though, I was spared. I found that out the next morning at breakfast, when my mother told me, "Your fathers work friend had a run in with our god. Alex, I know you like wandering around the valley, but I don’t want you going out there without permission anymore. It wouldn't be good if you angered the gods yourself."