‘They say it was here the residue was found.’ Hugh Fisher, reaver of Taskforce Delta, zipped up his leather jacket and stepped towards the lift doors. Wrinkles creased his face, and his brown hair was tinged with grey. He examined the whitewashed floors of St Benedict’s Hospital, which shimmered in the bright lights of the corridor. The corridor stank of disinfectant and was empty, besides an old woman sleeping on the bench next to the lift; she snored loudly, saggy jowls rippling with every breath.

Hugh’s gaunt face shined off the tiles to greet him as he surveyed the floor. He kept his ears pricked, listening out for footsteps or the buzz of propulsor-lift chairs.

The cool voice of Cleo Violet, Overseer of Taskforce Delta, rang down his earpiece. ‘Residue fits the description of imoort’ala. You know what you’re looking for?’

‘Course I do,’ he replied gruffly, rummaging through his jacket pockets. ‘I know what brain juice looks like – or immortal-whatever-you-want-to-call-it. I’m not a Naïve, you know.’ Laughter echoed down the earpiece, though it wasn’t Cleo’s. ‘Jonah sounds like he’s having a good time. Still not sure the world of hexes and reavers is one suitable for a ten-year-old.’

‘When you have a son of your own, then you can judge me on my parenting,’ Cleo snapped. ‘Anyway, he seems to be enjoying himself near enough. He looks up to you, you know.’

Hugh bristled. ‘That’s not a good thing.’ At last, the hand in his pocket found what it was looking for: a small, greyish-bluish cube, inscribed with runes and glyphs. A hex crystal.

He placed it on the floor, and tapped its top side twice. The crystal let out a small whistle, then glowed bright blue, the glow amplified by the harsh reflections off the tiled floor. He felt somewhat more assured after activating the hex crystal; it would protect against the Inbred Attacks of any dream-eaters he came across. Inbred Attacks were some of the deadliest attacks in the hexes’ arsenals – and some of the most difficult to defend against.

‘Kids should be looking up to heroes: Superman, Luke Skywalker, that humanitarian bloke in the paper. You know, the one who looks a wrong ‘un but isn’t. People like that.’

‘What’s to say you’re not a hero, Hugh?’

He sighed and his face darkened. ‘Windermere Heights.’

‘That was a year ago. Windermere…’

He stopped paying attention to what she was saying. It didn’t matter anyway. I’m not a bloody hero. I caused the Windermere massacre. I created Sinchara Khan. Heroes don’t make villains.

As Cleo continued down the earpiece, Hugh watched as concentric circles of blue light appeared around the hex crystal, moving away from the crystal like ripples on a pond. A silver glint caught his eye, coming from beneath the bench the old woman was sleeping on. He dropped to one knee to inspect, ducking next to the old woman’s right leg, grimacing as her over-scented perfume flooded his nostrils.

Beneath the bench was a small puddle of silvery-translucent liquid. A river of the liquid was running down the wall, feeding the puddle. There seemed to be a great quantity of it.

Hugh grimaced. ‘I’ve found the brain juice,’ he murmured, cutting Cleo off mid-sentence.

‘Very good – hang on, have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?’

He let out a brazen chuckle. ‘No.’ Dipping his fingers in the liquid, feeling it ooze around his digits, he sniffed, then frowned. ‘I don’t smell any traces of immigren venom in the juice. Not like a dream-eater to not poison its victims.’

Dream-eaters used immigren venom to paralyse their victims. With their prey paralysed, the dream-eaters would devour their victim’s mind and soul, feasting on their memories – the good and the bad – until all that was left was an empty husk. This emotionless form of human was known as a Barren.

‘Maybe it’s a new type?’ Cleo suggested. ‘God knows we seem to find a new breed of hex nearly every day.’

Hugh’s brows furrowed deeper. Something’s not right. This brain juice, it looks fresh… He grimaced. No. Something’s not right at all. He paused, thinking. It took him a few seconds to realise what was wrong.

The old woman had stopped snoring.

He rolled away from the bench and leapt to his feet, eyeing the old woman with wide eyes. Indeed, she was no longer snoring – nor breathing, for that matter. Her jowls were still.

Hugh bit his lip, forcing a hard look on his face. While most dream-eaters’ victims were usually left as Barrens, there were some who did not have the strength to live on. Elderly people – much like the woman had been – were the most common to die as a result of a dream-eater attack.

Hugh’s face twisted. If only I was a bit quicker, a bit more urgent…but it’s too late now.

‘Cleo, I’ve found our dream-eater – and the reason why there’s no poison.’ When targeting the elderly, dream-eaters didn’t need poison. Older people were less alert, less aware of certain things – and a dream-eater sucking out their brains was one of those things.

The dream-eater was nearby, though it was hiding, likely semi-immaterial. ‘There’s only one way to force this thing out into the open.’ Hugh glanced at the old woman’s body, feeling his muscles tense. His eyes sang to her silent apologies as he braced himself.

Though dream-eaters needed to be close to their prey to feast, they did not actually feast by physical means. Rather, they formed a strong psychic tether with their victims. This tether would act almost akin to a straw, allowing the dream-eater to consume its prey’s mind. Fire was the antidote to psychic attacks: as Fire Weaving countered Psychic Weaving, so flame could undo the dream-eater’s psychic tether.

Hugh crouched beside the old woman and sighed. I’m sorry. He looked up at her, at her creased and wrinkled face, at her eyes which were now clamped shut. She looked to be at peace, resting. Whatever friends and family she had, they would not ever find out what truly happened to her – nor would they even find out that she had died. She would just burn away, existing only in their minds.

Hugh rested a hand on her knee. ‘Irakis,’ he whispered. His hand warmed and flames sprouted from his palm, creeping across the old woman’s body until they engulfed her entirely. Though the Irakis spell was only Simple Form Weaving, it was still powerful enough such that, in a few silent moments, the old woman was nothing more than a black stain on the bench. Hugh grimaced as the bitter smell of burnt flesh clogged his nose. Every cell of the old woman’s body had been ignited and burnt to a cinder; if any part of her had remained unburnt, the dream-eater would have retained its psychic tether. But now, the tether was broken.

Right on cue, there was a shriek, loud and piercing. Hugh flinched. It came from behind. He turned to see, emerging like a phantom through the floor, was the dream-eater.

The dream-eater was only small, about the size of a dog, with four pawed legs and tail like that of a bobcat, but thicker and longer. A shaggy mane of purplish-black fur covered its body, trailing along the floor. Its head was triangular, feeding into a beaked mouth which clacked open and shut, revealing toothless gums and a slithering, white tongue. At the centre of its head, it had a huge, golden eye, circled by a ring of smaller golden eyes, each narrowed and locked on Hugh. Along its back were small, pinkish protrusions – brainscales; inside these, Hugh knew, was contained brain juice from previous minds the dream-eater had devoured, stored on the hex’s back like fat stored in a camel’s hump.

Hugh bristled. Running from the corners of the dream-eater’s mouth were long, pink barbels – psychic barbels – which trailed along the floor like tassles. He eyed them nervously. No matter how weak or low rank a dream-eater was, all reavers had to beware its psychic barbels. The hex crystal would protect against the Inbred Attacks but would not be able to stop the psychic barbels if they got hold of him.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the dream-eater, Hugh murmured, ‘I’m staring at our dream-eater. It’s only weak.’

‘How weak?’ Cleo asked.

‘Weak enough it can phase through floors and walls – I doubt I’ll need to use anything above Simple Form Weaving.’ Only weak hexes could phase through floors and walls; the more powerful hexes, those with higher phantom energy levels, had too much phantom energy to fit between the particles of solids.

‘It’s a por’ava. I estimate Second Rank,’ Hugh continued. ‘Nothing better than Fourth could wall-phase, and it seems too small to be of Fourth Rank itself.’ He knew he didn’t have to explain his reasoning to Cleo – he was among Taskforce Delta’s most skilled reavers and knew hexes and Weaving like the back of his hand; but still, doing so calmed him somewhat, reassured him.

His ears pricked. Footsteps, coming from behind. Two doctors in white uniforms were coming towards him. One walked, while the other hovered on a propulsor-chair, his legs dangling uselessly in the air. They emerged from an adjacent room, stopping outside the door.

Hugh bit his lip. Though hexes remained invisible to normal people – or “Naïves”, as they were known – his spells (“Weavings”) did not. That made destroying hexes near Na­ïves, while also trying to keep the Reaver Society a secret, very difficult. Though he knew some memory-wipe spells, they were not the most…pleasant…spells to use. More often than not, they erased a person of not only their memories regarding reavers, Weavings, and hexes, but all their memories – including, in extreme cases, their memories of themselves themselves. Allegedly, a Naïve had once reacted especially bad to a memory-wipe spell and had forgotten to live – not that Hugh had ever had anything that extreme happen. Either way, memory-wipe spells had a capacity to leave people worse off even than as Barrens.

Shouting came from inside the room the two doctors were stood outside. Hugh breathed a sigh of relief as the doctors raced inside, accompanied now by a gaggle of others, who had run out from several other rooms. Soon, the corridor was empty again.

As the door to the room slid shut behind them, Hugh turned back to the dream-eater, the por’ava. He gritted his teeth, splaying his palms wide.

The por’ava was the first to make a move: its psychic barbels launched towards him; its white, slender tongue enlengthened and slashed at him. A tri-attack. Hugh almost smiled to himself. Predictable.

Hugh reacted swiftly, ducking beneath the two barbels, which curved past him. As the white tongue lanced towards him, he sidestepped out of its path, reached out, and grabbed it in a tight, white fist.

‘Irakis,’ he growled, and the tongue set alight. The flames were quick, and soon the entire tongue was aflame, right the way from the tip into the por’ava’s mouth. The dream-eater squealed.

He splayed his palm towards the dream-eater. ‘Furrest.’ The por’ava shrieked, then disintegrated to dust.

‘That was easier than I thought,’ said Hugh, wiping a solitary sweat drop from his forehead. ‘Two spells and it was done.’

‘It was Second Rank – what did you expect?’ Cleo retorted.

‘It was weak for a Second Rank. Didn’t even need to cast any protective spells to deal with the barbels – its attacks were slow enough I could dodge them.’ He reached to pick the hex crystal cube off the floor, but it wouldn’t budge.

He sighed. ‘Crystal’s stuck. Still more dream-eaters here. I thought the dream-eater was too weak to be out here acting on its own – there must be a nest.’

Only strong hexes ever worked on their own – and that in itself was rare. Usually, hexes came from nests; almost all hexes First Rank to Fourth Rank – the weakest hexes – operated in nests.

‘I’ll try to find it. Hope it’s not too big.’

But before he could do anything, someone yelled from behind, ‘Help! Please! Help!’