Four mages entered, positioning themselves on different points of the circumference. The two Covens regrouped at the opposite ends of the arena. In the Pollos' corner the tension was palpable, as the four mages started preparing for the ritual.

«Jefe, what the hell?» Chico was in panic «the Oneiron? Nobody ever talked about Oneiron, why aren't we busting their sorry asses in the mundo real?»

«The wills projected in the Oneiron have a different strength whether their owners are deeply convinced to be in the right or in the wrong. Wrong-side wills almost always lose. This is why these trials take place in the Land of Dreams.»

«The Oneiron is peligroso!» Chico was clearly rattled. «Nobody knows how that dimension works! You're not supposed to go there! You just go there when you dream! It's a completely crazy place with no rules!»

«That's why you go there only in will, and not in person. Is just like dreaming. Nothing bad can happen to you in the Oneiron when you dream, or none of us would ever wake up from a nightmare!» Garaham reminded him. «So, man up, and just remember that you are strong, because you are right. But watch out for my brother: River does seem, and is, an idiot, but he's extremely powerful and a great fighter.» one could feel how painful it was for him to say such things.

The four mages organized the ritual in roughly one hour. Enough time to prepare for all of them, all but one. Banshee had been distracted for the full hour, hardly participated to the discussion or the planning.

Six camp beds had been brought on the two sides of the arena, to leave the central space free and ready to show what would have gone on in the Oneiron. Algernon returned, with the grimiest expression on his face, and laid down on his bed, before the Judge's chair. Justin, on the sides, simply hollered a "Good luck everyone" and sat down.

Each one of them laid down on one of them and were given a stone. They were what looked like normal river stones, well levigated, completely engraved with runes and symbols, glowing of a soft yellow light. They were instructed to put them on their foreheads, lie down, close their eyes and follow the fluxes they'd see.

In front of each one of them appeared a web of fluxes, but there was a clear path of yellow ones. A path they followed, until they reach a blinding, sick light.

Chico felt without breath, like after a long run. He soon realized he wasn't out of breath. The air itself, surrounding him, was somewhat heavy, like a breathable liquid, crawling up and down his windpipe. While taking his time to adapt to the situation, he looked around.

He was alone.

It was amazing and terrifying at the same time.

Over him, there was what looked a fuzzy, multicolor sky, multifaceted and rippled, as if he was looking at a hanging sea from below. The colors melted and separated, but even if they were in the hundreds of thousands, probably even ones he had never seen before, the air immediately around him had a strange yellowish feeling.

Under his boots, the desiccated, brown grass crackled and crumbled, but instead of pulverizing as the noise would suggest, it turned into a strange, viscous, translucid ichor, sticking uncomfortably to his soles. Dark brown and dried, as desiccated by an endless draught, stood dead trees, rising their thirsty branches to the liquid sky as in a prayer.

Chico sighed, and tried to walk towards a randomly chosen direction.

After some walking he saw a figure in the distance.

At first, he was quite sure it was another eye-corner hallucination, but as he got closer, he recognized he was not.

It was clearly Irissa. She was clad in a majestic dress made of shining ice, and was wandering around, looking around, as if lost.

She looked as alone as he was. Maybe separated and scared by the nightmarish appearance of this alien place, as he was, he could have convinced her to surrender. No fight, no fuss, just two adult people talking things out like civilized human beings.

Chico put on his best smile, raised his left hand and walked slowly and clearly with no menacing intentions.

«! I'm happy to find you here. What about if we just find somewhere to sit and talk this...»

He never finished his sentence. Because his words froze in the air, as his body was completely encased in a thick, transparent ice casket. It just took a swift movement of Irissa's hand.

The worst part was that he could perfectly see what was going on in front of his forcibly opened eyes. It was Irissa in front of him, sure. But at the same time, she wasn't. Her eyes were a dead giveaway that something was wrong.

They were wide opened, with a frenzied light in them, and her face was twisted in a satisfied, cruel expression. The icy lady floated to him and put an open hand right on the ice in front of his face, slightly pouting, as if she was sorry to see him in such a predicament.

Then, sudden as a change of weather in spring, her face distorted in a malignant grin, and she started to close her hand. The ice started to squeeze Chico's limbs.

A creepy crackling sound echoed in the nothingness around them, together with her sharpening laugh.

Chico couldn't move, couldn't even scream.

She was about completely close her hand, when something rolled against her foot. She looked down, perplexed, to see a small metallic ball with a blinking red LED. It beeped softly two times. The little bomb exploded with a loud bang. Chico felt the ice around him shatter for the explosion, and rolled on the disgusting grass, coughing. When the smoke went down, Irissa was gone, but a small trail of ice marked the direction she had ran away.

«Are you fucking mad? What if the ice broke me as well?» he screamed. Vopros shrugged.

«It didn't.» he just said. By the look of it, Vopros had already gotten the hang of how creation worked in the Oneiron.

They weren't using magic per se, there weren't even the right fluxes there, they were simply willing things into existence. And, apparently, Vopros's will strongly wanted a grenade belt and a AK-47.

«Come on, we have to find Banshee before Irissa comes back, or before the other two get a jump on her!» Chico said, starting to walk.

But all around them the place looked empty, flat and empty. Just some hills, here and there, making the landscape livelier, a patch of trees, dead and rotting, or just dead.

They started walking in a casual direction, and after some moments they had to stop and turn to their left. Because if they had needed a clue to follow to find Banshee, they had just found it.

At first it was just something quite subtle, like a white noise you didn't notice until it became somehow different. It was a song. Someone was singing. A lone, masculine voice. It was angelic, a wonderful kaleidoscope of tones, from incredible high notes to very deep ones. They couldn't make out the song, but it was haunting, with a slow and marching rhythm, rising up and crashing down, as if it was chanting the inevitable advance of a terrible army.

Over them, the multicolored sky was invaded by slow brown clouds, starting to come in as if blown by an invisible wind. They swirled and twisted under the pressure of mysterious forces, gathering all over them. The earth under their feet trembled with terrible violence. They could barely stand still, as around them some trees fell down, and cracks appeared between the dry blades of grass.

A hill started rising from the flat bore of the plain.

It was probably around 32 feet tall, and on its peak, there was a figure. A black, small, hooded figure, with outstretched arms, like a dark angel singing the most beautiful of lullabies in a cascade of minor tones.

They started running, and as they got nearer, they felt a pang of horror and disgust. Because the hill suddenly sprouted two long, irregular flails by its side, and started whipping something in front of it. But the pang of terror didn't come from the absurdity of it all.

The nearer they got, they clearer it become that the hill wasn't made of earth or stone. It was completely made of a squirming, ever-changing, ebullient mass of rotten corpses, clinging to one another like larvae swarming on a carcass. Staccato seemed incredibly more proficient than them with the Oneiron's inner workings.

And the grotesque arms of the hill where, slowly but with incredible force, flailing down towards a figure who was jumping and dodging. Even in the dim and whitish light of the Oneiron, Banshee's red hair was a dead giveaway.

Far from the fight, on a tall hill not so far away, the looming presence of Algernon Leshrac was clearly visible and perceivable by everyone. Still as frozen in time, the Judge was watching.

In their last dash towards the companion in need, distracted by the fierce apparition of the Judge, Vopros and Chico almost slammed into a giant tiger, scratching his ear. He turned hearing them approach and went on all fours.

Vopros took an instinctive step back. That beast was humongous. He could strike them all with just one fell swoop of his giant paws.

«I don't intervene, you don't intervene. Let's leave them at that.» the tiger roared, with River's deep voice.

Chico turned his gaze, focusing on Banshee.

If at first the Irish's movements looked like a good avoiding technique. One would have expected that after dodging she would have taken the time until the flails had to complete their next movement to fight back. But she was just dodging. One of the flails passed right over her head by a hair. One of the undead forming the flail detached itself from it, launching itself on her, his rotting mouth opened in a hissing cry, his boney talons slashing down at her, and slicing her arm, drawing blood. A hand-to-hand fight ensued, and this time Banshee used magic. She hit the corpse with a gush of wind so powerful she downright decapitated it, but in doing so she was distracted and one of the flails hit her, sending her fly away and fall crashing to the ground, a dozen feet away. She raised up, cleaning the blood from her broken lip with the back of her hand, and moved again towards the hill, starting to dodge again.

Her eyes were going back, every now and then, to the figure at the top of the hill. Every time she tried to gather the strength to cast a spell to reach him, or to hit him directly, or even to summon a gun to take a shot, a sudden memory would pass in front of her eyes.

Killian, playing hide-and-seek with her and her brothers, and fighting furiously for the hiding place in the cellar, with grandfar's weapons.

Killian, learning how to shoot, right beside her, so in synch with each other to the point they learned to shoot the hat from the other one's head at the same time without even flinching.

Killian's laugh, so heartwarming, so brotherly, when they talked in the evening, on the roof, under the stars, her sweet sound melting with Staccato's maniac laughter every time he got a hit and spilt blood.

Vopros took advantage of that moment, when Chico and River were half-distracted by the fight. He raised his rifle like a mace and took an epic blow with it aimed right at the side of the tiger's nozzle. Not expecting something like that, River stumbled on one side, taking two or three steps sideways and whelping in pain.

The Russian positioned himself and let go a furious rain of bullets against the Enforcer, who rapidly started to zigzag run, to avoid them.

«Vopros! Go figure out whatever's wrong with Banshee, I'll take River!» yelled Chico, moving his hands in the air. Summoning something would have required too much time. Summoning two meat cleavers, much less.

River focused on Chico and, with an incredible grace, slowly and ominously morphed into an enormous, towering black bear.

Chico swallowed, preparing for the fight.