Aspect Name - [Smokescreen]

Aspect Rank - [Awakened]

Aspect Description - [You are an excellent thief. You rob people of their treasures. You rob
creatures of their senses. You rob those who oppose you of their lives.]
Aspect Abilities - [Gone With the Wind], [Acrid Haze], [Trick of the Light], [Congeal]

[Gone With the Wind] - Turn into an immaterial mist, smoke, or haze (ie dust). You can move
in any direction and pass through any opening that air can pass through. You are limited by how
long you can hold your breath (i.e., you exhale entirely before using this ability, and are hardly
able to last. Taking a deep breath means you can hold this form for longer). The fuller your core,
the faster you travel in this form.

[Acrid Haze] - Create a volume of mist, smoke, or haze around you that disrupts the senses of
every creature within it. Eyes water and eventually become blind; ears register sounds as
muffled until the creature is deaf; smell is dulled until one smells nothing at all. It cannot be
dispersed by ordinary means. It must be kept up by a constant stream of essence; its effect can
be strengthened by using more essence. The effect dissipates once the creature leaves the
sphere.

[Trick of the Light] - Anywhere that there is mist, smoke, or any form of haze, you can create
illusions visible to every creature that has line of sight. Size and complexity of the illusion
determine the cost of essence. It must be kept up by a constant stream of essence.

[Congeal] - Anywhere that there is mist, smoke, or any form of haze, you can solidify it into any
shape. Size and complexity of the object determine the cost of essence. It must be kept up by a
constant stream of essence. [NOT IN USE FOR THIS STORY]

Innate ability - [Foggy]

[Foggy] - Mist constantly surrounds you.

Flaw - [Perspiration Expiration]

[Perspiration Expiration] - The mist that surrounds you is created from your body; you need
much more water than most to live.

I’m
 Robin wiped his brow with his sleeve. It was hot.

So, so, so hot.

He summoned [Sunny’s Knockoff Endless Spring] and took a long swig from it. That
bastard Sunless had lied. This thing did not hold “more water than anyone would need.” How
long had it been since he’d slept? Every time he closed his eyes, he felt his body dehydrating in
real time.

“Damnit… How the hell did Nephis survive this place?”

He had been tasked with finding “something worthwhile” in the region that Nephis had
wandered as a punishment by the House of Night. They didn’t even give him a Memory to
withstand the heat, and was told not to come back until his task was completed.

What a change of pace this was from Antarctica. There, the mist froze to his skin. He’d
never have to worry about that anymore, at least.

Overhead, the sun continued to beat down mercilessly on the endless fields of sand.
Still, Robin trudged on.

Cresting a hill, he set his foot on the downward slope, only to find his body slipping down
with alarming speed toward a small hole in the sand.

‘Gods damned Antlions!’

He activated [Gone With the Wind] and hovered as a cloud of dust above the hole.
Slowly, a giant insectoid Monster peeked its ridiculously oversized mandibles and hex eyes out
and peered around. Finding nothing despite the previous vibrations, it began to scurry back into
its den.

Robin was faster, though. The dust cloud suddenly formed into the shape of a person,
and Robin fell toward the creature before it could retreat. He threw a spear directly between the
creature’s eyes with as much force as he could. The hideous insect twitched, then went still,
mere feet from safety.

You have slain a Fallen Monster, [Ambushing Antlion]!

Robin stood contemplating next to the ghastly corpse, steaming blue blood leaking from
the wound. He shrugged and grabbed the ivory-like mandibles. Using his supernatural strength,
he dragged the massive body out of the hole and cut out the Soul Shards. Then, he ventured
inside the den.
 It was much more spacious than any other antlion den he had been in before.
Summoning a light Memory, he glanced around. No scorpion that had decided to also make this
place home. That was good. He took the opportunity to relax, taking a swig from the glass bottle
and sitting down against the wall, when his mesh armor snagged on something.

Years of combat experience made him turn immaterial instantly, though there was no use
for his panic. He found that the wall he had sat against was clearly not Antlion-made. The walls
were made of sandstone, and on them were fine, if a little eroded, writings and depictions. The
relief in the sandstone had caught on his armor.

Turning material again, he summoned an ordinary looking notebook and pen. Robin
walked around the room, holding his lantern up to the walls as the pen autonomously wrote in
the notebook.

The reliefs in the sandstone contained a series of crude images: some sort of serpent
with tears falling from its eyes onto a forest below; a robed figure slaying the serpent, with the
forest below now dead; 9 people confronting the robed figure; the robed figure bleeding, with all
but one of the 9 figures gone; the robed figure bleeding onto the dead forest as the trees made
way to fields of sand. He tried to read the runes underneath each image.

‘Sky snake of life? Vitality? Demon.. Demon of nothing? No, not quite… Demon of
emptiness? ‘The nine strong.’ Probably heroes… Yuris? Eurys? was left. Demon of emptiness
created… no, turned trees into sand.’

Robin was no researcher, but he was smart enough to piece it together. Some powerful
Nightmare Creature had slain a high class nightmare creature that gave life to the forest, and, in
so doing, turned this region of the Dream Realm into a desert. This did not excite him much.
Who cared how the Dream Realm came to be? Awakened had to survive in it, and that’s all that
mattered.

What did excite him, however, was the implication that humanity depended on a
Nightmare Creature, and even tried to avenge one’s death. The higher ups seemed to love any
information about long gone humans in the Dream Realm. Perhaps he could return to the
waking world and be pardoned in exchange for this information. He had a perfect record of the
relief in his notebook for them to pore over.

Satisfied, Robin took a swig of water and closed the entrance to the den. He was not
going to take any chances. Then, he laid down and got some sleep for the first time in days.

//////////

He awoke to a deep rumbling. He croaked as he sat up. His throat was so dry. Drier than
it had ever been. He had slept for far too long. Panic rising, he saw that mist had stopped
coming from his skin. Hand trembling, the skin cracked and bleeding, he summoned the glass
bottle and put it to his lips.

He drank greedily. Water dribbled down his chin but he could not bring himself to care.
Being dehydrated in an environment this hostile was not an option.

Once he had drunk enough to the point of wanting to vomit, he stopped. Minutes
passed. His skin began healing, the elasticity and youth returning to it as his trembling stopped.

And the mist began to slowly leak from his skin again.

Still, he knew it wasn’t enough. Hours passed as he continuously drank water. The
rumbling above him had long passed by now. Only once the mist surrounding him began
obscuring his vision did he stop.

His face betrayed no emotion after the whole ordeal. His brush with such a… mundane
death removed any lightheartedness he had felt earlier. Silently, he made his way out of the den.

On the surface, the fields of sand had been leveled flat. The Antlion corpse nearby had
been scoured from the inside out; even its ivory mandibles had been sucked of any nutrients,
until all that remained was the chitinous exoskeleton and the calcified exterior of the mandibles.

‘The Swarm saved my life by waking me up. Funny how that works out.’

What Nephis, the government, and the House of Night had failed to mention about this
death zone was that a rolling wave of locust-like Nightmare Creatures would periodically pass
over the surface, consuming every bit of organic material and razing the ground flat. He had
been caught in one for just a few seconds and barely escaped with his life into an Antlion’s den.
Luckily for him, there were only incubating eggs in there.

‘Why are most things in this damned region insect-like? It’s so creepy.’

He continued wandering. As always, the sun blazed overhead, unmoving and

unchanging. He witnessed many things he had seen before in this region: giant, scorpion-like
creatures with far too many legs and oversized claws battling Antlions; sandworms flying high
into the sky, crushing the scorpions either in their circular opening for a mouth or squeezing
them tight with their body; Dune Rats trailing behind him, hoping to scavenge on his remains;
Spiked Bloodspawns — giant centipedes with spikes running along their backs — lunging at him
from under the sand.

He mentally thanked his mentor from the House of Night who taught him to use his
Aspect to become nearly untouchable. As long as he had any sort of time to react, he could
become immaterial and avoid every attack aimed at him. This region pushed him to the limits,
however. He was exhausted, constantly dehydrated, and the repeated strain of having to hold
his breath to avoid Nightmare Creatures, especially pack hunters like the Bloodspawns, was not
helping.

Still, he wandered. The endless desert seemed to erase thoughts of the waking world
from his mind. Gone were the thoughts of pleasing the higher ups; the memory of the strange
mural in the Antlion’s den seemed distant. He walked and walked. The distinction between the
ground and the sky grew blurry. It was like the air had grown hazy…

His leg bumped into something, and, by instinct, he went immaterial. A massive
scorpion, a Demon at least, had simply brushed past him. Beneath him, Dune Rats followed the
scorpion. The usually stationary Antlions were dragging themselves along the ground in the
same direction.

It struck him as odd, but he had not taken a deep breath in time. He turned material
again before he could complete his train of thought.

‘Well, as long as they’re not harming me… I need to get moving again.’

As he walked, he noticed wide craters in the sand that were dyed crimson and had been
left untouched by the Swarm. Robin didn’t care, however. The Swarm could eat and raze
everything it wanted to. He just needed to keep walking.

To his right, the scorpion that he had bumped into earlier climbed into a gaping hole in
the ground. Something about that struck him as wrong; didn’t they avoid going into Antlion
dens?

‘No matter…’

The haze around him had grown almost palpable. That was strange. Fine dust was
always moving in the wind in this death zone, yet here it was still.

‘A haze that can’t be dispersed by ordinary means. It’s like my Aspect. Wait.’

His eyes shot wide as his foot stepped into empty air. Turning immaterial, he gazed
down, and was met by the sight of a fleshy pit tens of meters across with muscles working in
concert to push hapless Nightmare Creatures further into it; here and there, stray tentacle
creatures ripped pieces off especially large abominations so that they would not fight back.

‘A Tyrant. No. This must be a Titan.’

The fog began to clear from his mind as he went on without breathing in the colossal
Nightmare Creature’s haze. Slowly but surely, though, he was bound to asphyxiate in this form.
Death met him either way. To add insult to injury, the haze’s mind inhibiting properties had
stopped him from drinking nearly enough water.
 ‘Damnit… I only have one option here.’

Turning material again, he landed as far away from the pit as he could and immediately
activated [Acrid Haze], pouring ridiculous amounts of his essence into it to strengthen it.
And then he breathed in.

No mind altering haze filled his lungs. He was as lucid as ever.

He exhaled shakily. His fingers were trembling and his heart was pounding, but he was
alive. He had a chance at making it out.

Looking around, he had landed in one of the reddened craters in the sand that had been
left untouched by the Swarm. That was good. He then activated [Trick of the Light] to make it
appear as if there was a wall around his position. A Spiked Bloodspawn walked around his
illusion and straight into the pit.

Robin had made up his mind. Even if he were to get kicked out of the House of Night, he
would accept it. He needed to get out of this situation.

Pure dread filled his stomach as he felt for his anchor in the real world, however. It was
gone. Like it had been not just severed, but that the ability to anchor itself was erased.

‘No, no no no. This can’t be happening. How could I not anchor to the real world? What
kind of cruel fucking joke is this? The Spell shouldn’t do this. No. Think, Robin. Something was
robbed of you. Who or what could’ve taken it?’

He took a swig of the glass bottle. The Titan? But those existed within the Spell. The
Dream Realm itself? He had felt for his anchor before and always found it. He drummed his
fingers on his leg, and heard an unpleasantly crisp sound of two hard objects colliding.

Looking down, his legs were bone. His pants had unraveled, seam by seam. The flesh
on his fingers, which had been touching his pants, were turning into fine dust, slowly trickling
onto the red sand below him.

He took a deep breath, and went immaterial.

‘What the fuck. What the FUCK. First my anchor, now my body. What the fuck is doing
this?’

Then, it dawned on him.

 The red sand. Even the Swarm avoided it. Formed exclusively in craters, as if someone
had dropped blood on the endless fields. This was the Demon of Emptiness’s doing, or
whatever the hell those runes said.

He floated up and away from the crater and felt for his anchor. It was extremely weak,
but the connection was there again.

He turned material and again activated [Acrid Haze] and [Trick of the Light] to be left
alone.

The situation was frankly catastrophic.

The majority of his fingers had turned to bone. The edges of his flesh did not bleed, at
least, but they did not seem to be healing either, even with essence. He could only grip
[Sunny’s Knockoff Endless Spring] with the palms of both hands.

That was the inconvenience. The real issue was that his legs were now bone. There was
no flesh or tendons to make himself walk, let alone stand. The best he could do to move in his
material form was to drag himself along the ground. The silver lining was that he felt no pain
from his injuries.

‘Nephis can heal… No wonder she made it out of this place alive. This must be the most
hostile region of the Dream Realm. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck the House of Night. Fuck this region. I’m
making it out of here and killing Naeve and his family for putting me through this.’

He continued the process of floating further away and breathing clean air in his own
haze, expending essence in the process. No Nightmare Creatures assaulted him; they were too
focused on becoming food for the Titan.

Over and over he made a tiny bubble to breathe in, and floated forward as far as he
could, until he could no longer.

Turning around, he saw that the haze was now just an orange blob kilometers away from
him. So, he dragged himself forward with his arms. Away from the Titan. In search of shelter. In
search of anything that could get him out of here.

The red craters of sand grew more common as he traversed the landscape, and the
Nightmare Creatures grew sparser. How long had it been? A day? Two? A week? The
unmoving sun refused to tell the passing of time. The mist leaking from his skin was ebbing as
time marched on. There were no slopes to give away the presence of an Antlion den, either. It
was just him, his water, the sun, and the few paths he could make through the now often
impassable sections of red sand.
 ‘Yeah, this is definitely the work of a demon. No god could make a landscape this
wretched.’

Robin’s connection to his anchor, though better, was still not solid, so he did not dare risk
to go back yet. Who knew what Nightmare Creatures he may encounter if he landed outside of
the city? He wasn’t going to take that chance without legs to stand on. He took a swig.

Then, as his head came down, he noticed two things at once:

The first was many Dune Rats approaching him.

The second was the Swarm approaching far in the distance.

If there was any chance of him making it out, it was surely gone now. He didn’t have
fingers to grip weapons, nor legs to fight on.

‘I’m tired…’

He summoned his spear. Even if it was of Ascended rank, and the Dune Rats were
merely Awakened, what use would it be? He couldn’t hit them. So, he sent it back into his Soul
Sea.

And then the sand around him began to turn red. At least, that’s what it looked like.
Robin was still on a normal patch of sand; [Trick of the Light] made it seem otherwise to the
Dune Rats.

The Dune Rats had now made it to him and stopped abruptly at the circle of red sand he
had made in his illusion. The things were appalling to look at. Eyes with thick, viscous, yellow
membranes that shook with every movement. Shaggy yellow-orange hair that barely covered
the pink skin underneath. Rotting rodent teeth that protruded through the bottom lip like some
sort of sheath.

They gnashed their teeth in frustration as they circled around him, but refused to take a
single step into the illusion.

“Serves you right motherfuckers! Scram! Get the fuck away!”

To his surprise, they actually did begin to move, and with great haste. He laughed in
delight. But, his smile fell soon after. They were digging in a regular patch of sand.

Turning around, he saw that the Swarm was now nearly upon him.

There was no cover this time. He’d have to tough it out and hold his breath.
 He closed his eyes, and inhaled as much as he could. He tried lowering his heart rate to
no avail. He could feel the blood in his ears, the pressure mounting in his skull. He opened his
eyes and immediately went immaterial.

Not a second later and he would have been hit full force with the Swarm. The sheer
mass of insects pulled him along in his immaterial form despite his attempts to move in the
opposite direction.

His heart rate was scarily high when he went immaterial. There was no doubt about it:
he would have to go material in the middle of the Swarm.

Armor wouldn’t work. The damned insects would find any gap and eat him from there.
Especially with his legs missing. Lots of empty space to enter from there.

‘Its one weakness is the red sand. It’ll eat me even if I’m in a crater, it just won’t touch
the red sand. I need something that they can’t get into. Something solid and that they can’t
move.’

Something that can’t move… something that can’t be dispersed by ordinary means.

He activated [Acrid Haze] and [Trick of the Light].

The pulling force acting on him stopped, and he had to stop himself from overshooting
his own illusion. He landed in a tiny section of clear sand. Around him, the locusts parted in a
bubble, packed so densely that they blocked the sun.

The individual locusts were smart enough to avoid a sudden appearance of red sand.
He exhaled and went into a coughing fit. Summoning the glass bottle, he drank until he needed
to breathe again. Still, the Swarm showed no signs of decreasing. In fact, it seemed to grow
louder. It kept increasing in volume until it reached an unbearable crescendo, before abruptly
falling silent.

The locusts had passed over him completely, allowing the sun to illuminate a robed
figure guiding the Swarm from behind, it’s arms moving in wide gestures as if it was a conductor.
From under the hood he could see mandibles; the sleeves gave the impression of claws. The
longer he gazed at the figure, the more… empty he felt. The world around him felt like it was
turning to nothing. He was nothing. There was nothing. Empty wasn’t the right word.

This was oblivion.

This was the Demon of Oblivion in the flesh, here to bring pestilence upon the lands
where he was made to bleed. He was sure of it.

He blinked, and the Swarm and the figure were gone. The feeling of oblivion had lifted.
 He sat for what felt like hours, unable to move. Only when he felt his skin begin to crack
did he snap out of it and drink water.

And he began crawling again. He stopped only to drink water. He would corner stray
Dune Rats and crush them to his chest and eat them as he crawled, trailing red on the sand
behind him.

He had a gut feeling that there was something at the origin of the Swarm. Perhaps
something that could undo the Oblivion that decimated his legs. Maybe it was just the delirium
from dehydration setting in. Either way, he couldn’t go back to the real world yet, and it beat
lying down.

More days of crawling passed. Close encounters with Spiked Bloodspawns almost killed
him on multiple occasions. Those he couldn’t run from, he fooled with illusions. Those he
couldn’t fool, he ran from. He kept up the song and dance until nearly the whole ground was
red. Few patches here and there let him traverse further along.

Something new came up, though. Once the ground had turned entirely red, gnarled,
obsidian-like growths — small at first, which grew larger and more frequent as he immaterially
hopped from rock to rock — grew out of the ground. They all seemed to be oblong and point in
one direction: the source of the Swarm.

What felt like a week passed. His anchor to the real world was good now, but he couldn’t
go back yet. He had to find the source. He was an Ascended; he could go weeks without food
easily, and water was fine for the most part. He was going insane, though. He would frequently
look behind him in fear. When he slept, he dreamt of the Demon.

So, when he saw a colossal tree, with glimmering black and white bark, he did not
believe his eyes. At this point, the rocks were abundant enough to simply crawl from one to the
other.

‘Are these the tree’s roots?’

It took him another couple hours to be within a few kilometers of it. The tree must’ve
been thousands of meters of tall. Its trunk had massive black and white scales that reflected
light in an unnatural way. The branches spread out for at least a kilometer in each direction, and
all along it, massive water droplets hung from them. There was a general flurry of movement
around these water droplets. He recognized it instantly as the locusts from the Swarm.

‘What the hell…?’

 As he watched, one of the water droplets turned red, and everything scattered away from
it. Suddenly, the feeling of oblivion returned. He was looking at the demon, somewhere near that
water drop.

He summoned the notebook Memory and had it sketch the view in the best detail it
could. He pushed through the feeling of oblivion and got even closer to the tree.

The black and white scales formed patterns. He swore as he translated them:

‘WAS BEAST GOD. OBLIVION DESTROYED ME.’

There was no cure for his legs and fingers. It was just the Demon of Oblivion’s battle
trophy and home base: the dead serpent, the Beast God, its corpse made into a tree that feeds
the Swarm that razes its domain.

He chuckled. Then he began laughing. He felt for his anchor in the real world as he
continued to laugh uncontrollably. He continued to laugh even as he appeared in his house,
unable to do anything but sit there. Find a cure? Get revenge? Nonsense. All of it was for
nothing. The House of Night wouldn’t take him now that he was a cripple. They’d supply him
with some credits for his information, sure, but he was basically useless now.

Once he stopped laughing, he wiped some tears from his eyes, and took a swig of water.