Zoe wasn’t a very big fan of the sound the City construct made when she finally committed and ran the tip of her spear through its back.

On top of the unpleasant slicing sound from the spear itself, a kind of tired, defeated sigh escaped out from the lanky creature’s mouth, almost as if it had already long since given up, and Zoe was somehow doing it a favour by putting it down.

She pulled her weapon back towards her and let the man-like thing slump to the ground whilst Dorian silently cut down its two companions to her left.

‘They’re not… disappearing…?’ Zoe pointed out, noting the absence of that black dust emanating from the felled constructs’ bodies.

‘They’re not dreamers,’ Dorian answered simply, sliding his lengthy sword back over his shoulder and letting go of the handle as it faded from view. ‘They’d disappear if you killed whatever they belong to, but, individually, you might as well have stabbed a bag of flour.’

‘Felt more like stabbing a bag of wet gravel…’ Zoe grimaced, sparing the construct she’d killed one last look before stepping over it and setting off up the stairs. Dorian followed her lead, coming up alongside her as they neared the top step.

Cresting the incline, their destination came into full view, and, once she’d checked around to be sure there weren’t any lurking nightmares near the top of the stairs, Zoe took a moment to appreciate the sheer palatial size of it.

Towers and spires loomed high, silhouetted against the starry sky above, and sprawling wings of resplendent, stone-hewn architecture yawned out to either side of them. Meticulously well-kept topiary gardens filled the space between the building’s exterior wall and the columned balustrade along the ledge that separated the grounds from the city streets below.

‘This is a university…?’ Zoe asked. Dorian hadn’t exactly elaborated much on their destination since they’d set off, but that was the word he’d used to describe it.

‘This is the university,’ the boy nodded. ‘It’s where the monsters that look like the one I found in your brother’s dream tend to congregate. More lab coats than cassocks…’ He let out an audibly awkward sigh.

‘I’ve um… not had much luck finding my way around inside before, I’m afraid…’

‘You’ve been inside?’

‘Once or twice,’ he nodded, ‘looking for any clues that might get me out of here, but uhh… It’s a maze in there. And not just a regular maze, either. I’m fairly sure places move when you’re not looking…’

‘Great…’ Zoe winced. ‘But… that’s where you think we’ll find Kit…?’

‘I’d say it’s our best bet,’ Dorian replied. ‘It was odd seeing a nightmare skulking about in his dream in the first place, given he wasn’t in it at the time.’ He tilted his head to the side. ‘The nightmares in the cathedral perform religious rituals, and the ones here seem to conduct research… I figure it stands to reason the one in his dream might have been there because they’re currently researching him.’

‘Why…’ Zoe asked, a sense of nausea creeping up through her abdomen, ‘why would they be “researching” him…?’

‘Not sure,’ Dorian answered. ‘Maybe he’s the first human they’ve come across who couldn’t wake up before they dragged him down here…?’

‘But what about you?’ Zoe asked. ‘You can’t wake up either.’

‘Never had the pleasure of being “got” by one of them before,’ he said, gritting his teeth at the thought. ‘Until earlier today, anyway… and I suppose I must have got lucky: that one was clearly starving. I don’t think it even crossed its mind to take me alive.’ He gave her a sidelong glance.

‘Have I mentioned how distressing dying here is…?’ he added. ‘Getting cornered really is something I try my best to avoid…’

‘All right,’ Zoe sighed, realising she was still clinging onto her spear, and mimicking Dorian’s example in casting it over her shoulder and forgetting it existed. ‘It’s the best lead we’ve got. How do we get inside?’

‘Well, last time I was here it was reasonably quiet, just so long as we stay away from the main entrance, so…’

Dorian gestured off to their left.

‘We can try one of the side doors,’ he suggested, ‘but… Especially if these things are in the business of capturing human dreamers? We really can’t be seen once we’re inside.’

***

Much as Dorian had alluded to, getting inside the nightmare university had turned out to be the easy part.

The hallways reminded Zoe of Sacks Hospital, except that, here, the period wooden panelling and patterned floors were well-kept enough to look almost new, other than for the thick patches of dust that gathered in the building’s darker corners.

Although they were mercifully devoid of either nightmares or their constructs in any great number, the passageways seemed to twist and wrap back on themselves in ways that fundamentally didn’t make any sense. Following the ornate signage on the walls for various wings and departments seemed only to lead to dead ends and impossible loops.

By the fourth time the two of them had unintentionally returned to the entrance they’d come in by, Zoe’s head was starting to hurt.

‘Ugh,’ she groaned, leaning heavily up against a dusty door frame, ‘we don’t have time for this… Kit doesn’t have time for this…’ Glancing down, she absently reached out to gently pet the butterfly resting on the door handle with the back of her finger,

‘Yeah…’ Dorian sighed, keeping a careful eye on the nearby corridors as Zoe paused to take a break. So far, the labyrinth of corridors had afforded them ample opportunities to disappear before anything approaching had even the slightest chance to spot them. ‘This is basically how I remember it… The nightmares here must have some way of navigating we don’t know about, but that doesn’t exactly help us much.’

There was a long period of silence as the two of them thought the problem over.

‘Maybe we should head to the main entrance…’ Zoe suggested, feeling increasingly desperate as the seconds ticked away. ‘Follow one of the nightmares in.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Dorian frowned. ‘You did hear what I said about ending up in the same situation as your brother, right?’

‘Well, we could find somewhere to watch from and wait until it’s relatively quiet,’ she suggested. ‘It can’t be busy all day round…?’

‘Ugh…’ Dorian sighed, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers before finally turning for the exit. ‘C’mon,’ he told her. ‘You might as well see for yourself why that’s not going to work…’

***

From their position atop the tower across from the university ridge – perched carefully at the base of the building’s spire – it was quite hard for Zoe to argue with Dorian’s objections. Not now she could see the institution’s entryway for herself.

“Crawling” was probably the word she would have chosen to describe it. Not least because of the sheer number of nightmares and constructs that prowled the road between the outer and inner gates, but also because of how some of the nightmares here looked.

Each one was markedly different – so far the only nightmares she’d seen that looked largely similar had been the congregation back at the cathedral – but many here bore a certain… insectile quality to their usual “once human” appearance that was all the more marked when observing them from up high.

Hulking bodies extending into segmented chains of additional torsos dragged themselves along the ground like lethargic centipedes. Faces bent around obscenely protruding teeth twisted into ant-like mandibles clicked and snapped at the air. Twitching, membranous wings like those of grotesque, fleshy dragonflies trailed folded behind them like macabre capes of skin.

Six wings on each nightmare that had them, Zoe noted, glancing ever-so-briefly to the far more graceful six-winged butterfly perched comfortably on Dorian’s head.

The boy pulled out a handheld telescope from within the infinitely ill-defined pockets of his frock coat and extended it, placing it to his eye for a moment before handing it across to Zoe.

‘Still think this is a good idea…?’ he asked, his tone more one of concern than self-satisfaction. His voice was cautiously low, even as far out of nightmare earshot as the two of them probably were.

Putting the spyglass up to her eye, Zoe spotted more than one of those cloaked giants in amongst the crowd, similar to the one that had chased them into the tavern cellar. Their forms were as varied as any of their broader kind, but where the more numerous nightmares here seemed to wear a loose uniform of what had once been lab coats and academic gowns, these others wore either cloaks or bands of fabric that wrapped around and hid as much of their bodies as possible. Even so, they still looked far more human in proportion on average.

‘Yeah…’ Zoe grimaced, ‘no… You were right. Still, might as well look around now we’re up here. Maybe we’ll be able to see something in through one of the windo—’

She froze as her wandering spyglass glanced across the university’s seeming “crest”, displayed proudly in gilded metal directly above the inner gate.

At the very centre of the Baroque design: six wings, furled all around each other in a familiar pattern, almost as if to conceal something hidden within.

‘That symbol…’ she muttered, passing the telescope to Dorian and pointing to the gate, ‘I’ve seen it before. The pharmaceutical lab where we found the tunnels…’

‘The wings in the crest?’ Dorian asked. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen it around… You… think the university’s connected to those labs somehow?’

‘Sort of makes sense, I guess,’ she frowned. ‘Research. Labs. Universities…’ She thought hard for a long moment, considering their options and trying to weigh up just how much longer Kit could afford to wait.

‘It’s Sunday morning,’ she thought aloud, ‘and I was going to go back there today anyway with my friend…’

‘I… suppose everything here is a kind of warped reflection of real-world Holmstowe,’ Dorian nodded. ‘You’re thinking there might be something out there than could help us here?’

‘Ugh,’ Zoe huffed, ‘I guess it doesn’t matter either way. I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever had trouble falling asleep during the day, but I don’t have time to trek all the way back here from the cathedral again.’

‘You… wouldn’t have to,’ Dorian shrugged, nodding up at the sky. ‘Just use the moon…?’ Zoe blinked, then frowned. Finally, she settled on a scowl, and levelled it at Dorian.

‘You mean to say’ she hissed, ‘we could have cut hours off this whole thing and just come here the same way I got to the cathedral from my dream?!’

‘Well, yeah,’ Dorian whispered back, ‘you could now, because now you’ve been here. I could have come here straight away, but how were you supposed to visualise somewhere you’ve never been before…?’

‘…What?’

‘That’s how it works,’ Dorian explained, starting to relax again as Zoe seemed to be following his reasoning. ‘The moon is constant everywhere, but you have to have been somewhere to know what the moon looks like from that location.’

‘I… right,’ Zoe replied, giving the boy a shallow nod of apology before turning her head to think. ‘So… I could come right back here if I woke up now and went back to sleep after heading to the labs?’

Dorian nodded, exhaling away some of the built-up stress now that it seemed they at least had the beginnings of a plan.

‘Go,’ he told her, Faust’s snowy wings glimmering under the moonlight in question from behind the boy’s head. ‘I’ll wait for you here.’