“Say whaaaaa?” Mena said, her mouth hanging open and her hands pointing to her eyes like they would spin from disbelief.

“I possessed you,” Caligari said back, before uttering a soft, oddly mischievous, “Boo.”

“B-b-but…?” Mena stuttered, and she started hugging her body nervously.

“Relax,” Caligari responded. “I’m not doing it now.”

“Why?!” Mena asked.

“I wanted to show you the benefits of being in complete control of a situation.”

“So,” Mena said, still in shock. “You were controlling me? I though you just gave me advice.”

“To be fair,” Caligari replied. “When people know they’re being possessed, they tend to struggle. So instead, I lulled you into a calm and then possessed you.”

Mena’s hands shook and her eyes glared at Caligari for the first time. “You were so good at that. But you still haven’t answered my question, why did you possess me?”

Caligari for once, looked shocked. “I was…just trying to help you. And judging by how Electra acted, I was successful.”

“Well,” Mena said, feeling a bit bad she had snapped at Caligari. “I appreciate you sparing me from her wrath…and the embarrassment.”

Caligari gave a tentative smile. “So, you’re happy I did it?”

“Well, it was a little extreme,” Mena said, “But I guess I’ll take some freaky phantom lady crawling around in my brain than being the laughingstock of the whole school.”

A look of creepy hunger glinted in Caligari’s eyes. “Great!” she exclaimed. “And I can do it again for you tomorrow too.”

“Uh sure,” Mena said. “I don’t mind it if it spares me the embarrassment…but…why are you so invested in me?”

Caligari’s smile vanished, and a look of bashfulness came over here face. “Because I need to ask you a favor. You’re seeing Gemini tonight?”

“Supposedly,” Mena said, a look of suspicion on her face. “I really haven’t seen him much at all lately. He always seems so busy….why?”

Caligari immediately bowed her head, her short hair covering her whole face and she said incredibly fast, “Please can you ask him to the dance for me?”

Mena’s eyes widened from shock, but when she observed how Caligari’s head was still submissively bowed, a mischievous smile crept across her face and she narrowed her eyes. “I’m surprised someone as intimidating as you has trouble asking a boy out.”

“Why must you make this difficult?” Caligari whined like a girl half her age. “I’d rather face the most horrifying night creeper than face rejection.”

Immediately, a feeling of sympathy came over Mena’s face. She was quite aware of characters in her romance novels quite like Caligari—the fearless and intimidating warrior women who were still quite meek when it came to the affairs of the heart. Feeling she was helping a real-life love story come to life, Mena responded with the stars of the night sky reflected in her eyes.

“Of course, I’ll ask him, Professor,” she said, with a light nod of her head.

“Oh, you will?” Caligari asked, her voice breathy like it had sucked in a lot of air.

“Only if you remember to breath when you’re around him,” Mena responded with a wink.

“Got it,” Caligari said, a big smile on her pale face. She danced in place with her eyes closed before looking back at Mena.

“But no flunking me because I can’t focus in your class!” Mena said, lecturing her teacher. “It’s not my fault I have a runaway imagination.”

“Right,” Caligari responded. “Perhaps I can make an accommodation for that.”

“And you’re still going to help me succeed in etiquette practice?”

“Of course,” Caligari said. “You won’t even know you’re riding a Unicornea until it’s over.”

Mena stuck out her hand with a firm expression. “It’s a deal.”

Caligari took Mena’s hand and they shook. After saying goodbye, Mena hurried through the hallways to Gemini’s tower. Everyone had turned in, leaving Mena in the darkness. Only the torches, glowing dimly on the walls of the corridors offered any kind of light. It was only until Mena arrived in a hallway with a long mirror, did she feel unsettled. Torches burned on the opposite stone walls and they reflected in the mirror, illuminating Mena as she walked.

As Mena moved across a regal red carpet lain out on the floor, she heard an odd sound. Her footsteps made noise along the carpet, but they were not the normal sound of feet treading. They sounded like plucked strings in an orchestra. The sounds were not pleasing to the ear, often sounding dissonant, like they were out of key.

Who’s playing music? Mena thought to herself, swallowing hard. Mena crept faster on her feet, and the sinister orchestra seemed to speed up. The strings were plucked more and more aggressively as she walked and a low, chilling violin sound started sliding against her brain too. It was only then, when Mena looked in the mirror, brightened only by torchlight did she see an ominous silhouette of a dark figure reach out towards her. Mena screamed and started running as fast as she could, the orchestra now climaxing in furious strums and crashes. Mena did not look back until she reached the wooden door at the end of the room. She opened it and slammed it behind her, breathing hard and fast.

“M-m-m-m-miserable M-m-m-magicaps,” she stammered, her heart feeling like it was being played like xylophone. “What in the world was that?”

She breathed out a sigh of relief, realizing she was now in Gemini’s tower. Not even stopping to rest her throbbing heart, she proceeded to climb the stairs, hoping desperately that Gemini wanted her this night. When she got to the top, she was relieved to see that there was no note on the door.

She knocked, and when Gemini answered, he was dressed darker and moodier. His dark bushy hair was swept over his eye, and he wore a dark cape. “Look who has come to see me in my darkest hour,” Gemini answered, his voice strangely desensitized. “Come inside, and together, we will share in the gloom the night has to offer.”

Gemini seemed off again, but Mena much preferred his company to that of the mirror shadow and the evil orchestra that stalked her.

As Mena entered Gemini’s study, the Clown Prince asked Mena a question, imploring her in his strangely deep voice. “Perhaps the teenybopper would like to hear a bedtime story before she tucks herself in tonight?”

“Uh…sure?” Mena responded. “Anything to still my beating heart.”

“Of course,” Gemini said, and he started to laugh deeply. “This is a humble fairy tale of a world long passed…Come…”

Gemini led Mena through his study into another room, this one was fully dark, and Mena could not see anything in front of her. Fortunately, the Clown Prince held out his hand, and created a glowing luminous orb in his hand. They stopped at a red curtain. Gemini pulled a low hanging rope beside it, and it was swept aside, revealing a glowing portrait of stained glass depicting the Dream Castle itself.

“Once upon a time, there was a magical castle as bright and colorful as your wildest dreams… but it was not a school, it was the home of a royal family of jesters.”

Gemini led Mena to another curtain right next to it. He pulled a rope again, and this time, Mena gasped at what she saw. Four people stood outside the Dream Castle, and they were the people she had seen in the enormous stained-glass portraits outside the ballroom.

The stained-glass figures moved like they were alive and breathing, ranging from the queen with the half-painted face, to the king with his jester-like crown, to Gemini himself (or someone who looked like him) to a young woman with bushy purple hair who lacked face paint or anything remotely clownlike.

Gemini turned to Mena. “The king and queen weren’t any ordinary king and queen that you might find on the ground of Autolycus, for they presided over the dreams of all mortals.”

“Whoa really?” Mena asked, stupefied.

“Their job was to ensure that everyone on the ground had pleasant dreams, filtering out the bad ones and allowing the good ones to flow through their subconscious like fine wine.”

Looking up at the stained glass, Mena watched as both red and black, jagged dream clouds and fluffy white ones both passed through the Dream Castle, but only the fluffy white ones emerged intact.

“The king and the queen had two children,” Gemini said, holding out his hand to his own stained-glass figure and the young woman. “A very happy, handsome young clown prince and a slightly older princess slated to be next in line on the throne. While the young prince approved of the way his parents ran things, his sister often had qualms about their practices.”

Gemini led Mena to the next curtain and pulled it aside, revealing a depiction of the princess and the clown prince standing in a bedroom together. The details of the stained glass were fine enough to show that the young woman had a conflicted expression on her face.

“Violet, the princess, often wondered whether it was right to spare mortals of the bad dreams they had. For while it made sleeping more pleasant, it also lulled the inhabitants of Autolycus into a false sense of security against the demons and monsters that lived in the nightmare void. She thought, ‘One day, they may find a way to attack people, and they’ll be defenseless when it happens.’”

“The Clown Prince,” Gemini said. “Was very close with his sister, and often worried if there was any truth in her beliefs. Violet told him, ‘It would be so much better to train the mortals with imagicnation in a school to fight against the night creepers rather than keeping them blissfully unaware of them. For, that darkness is still there, even if they—and our parents—think it’s not…’”

Gemini spoked for his own figure. “‘Perhaps we should ask our parents about this,’ the Clown Prince said. ‘You are next in line on the throne after all.

Once again, Gemini led the young witch to another stained glass and curtain, this time revealing the Clown Prince and his sister in a throne room with red and green regal thrones. The figure of the king and queen shook their heads. “Their parents,” Gemini said with resignation. “Did not believe her. The Nightmare Void had been sealed for ages and what trickles out is merely bad dreams,’ they said. Nothing to worry about.”

The stained glass of Violet vanished from the room, and Gemini turned his head in sorrow. “Violet told the Clown Prince she was going to run away and join the Blissful Knights of Dreams, so we’d have a fighting chance when the night creepers emerged. But before she left, she told the Clown Prince, ‘But when I’m gone you can rule in my place. Just do what feels right to you.’”

The other figures in the stained glass bent their heads in sorrow as Gemini narrated further, “The young jester’s days were less happy as the king and queen wept over Violet’s disappearance, and one day”—Mena gasped as the whole dream castle was enveloped in darkness—“An enormous black void with a singular red eye appeared and sucked the floating castle inside.”

Leading Mena to the last stained glass and curtain in the room, Gemini pulled it aside, and Mena watched in horror as jagged shadows appeared and swept over the king and queen. “The worst fiends from the nightmare void appeared and ransacked the poor castle from the inside. The guard were no match, and soon, even the king and queen fell.”

The shadows encircled the Clown Prince as he kneeled in prayer. “All hope was lost as the monsters surrounded the young prince, but right before he was about to fade into the ether, a knight in all purple appeared fending off the foes.”

Mena watched dazzled as Violet appeared in a magnificent cape and glowing purple chainmail. ‘Use your power, Gemini,’ she said to me, ‘and teleport this castle out of the Nightmare Void. I’ll use my remaining power to keep these fiends at bay.”

The stained-glass figure of Violet held out her hand and the shadows were surrounded by a glowing purple forcefield. The figure of Gemini reached his hand out desperately towards Violet. Gemini’s voice was soft and sorrowful. “My sister exclaimed to me, ‘Just do it.’ And I did.”

The castle left Violet standing in the Nightmare Void, and it soon appeared over the grassy fields of Autolycus. “The Clown Prince left his beloved sister behind,” Gemini said with his head bent. “And his parent’s corpses. Along with his mentor, Roy G Bivion, the Clown Prince did what felt right and turned the castle into an academy of dreams. From now on, Groundborns and the children of Dula could rise up against the Nightmare Void and fight for the dreams of everyone.”

At last, Gemini turned to face Mena. “So what do you think?”

“Wowie zowie,” Mena exclaimed. “That was a story worthy of publication.”

“I’d prefer, my dear witchy poo,” Gemini said with a look of remorse. “If that yarn stays hidden from the public, along with my inner darkness.”

“Got it,” Mena responded.

“Well,” Gemini said, waving his hand and Mena appeared back in is study. “Now you know why I wear black in the depths of night. It isn’t just ‘cuz I look dapper.”

“But you do,” Mena said. “Oh, and by the way…uh a certain special teacher is looking to ask you to the homecoming and her name is…”

“Great juggling jesters, don’t tell me!” Gemini exclaimed. “Is my dear Stellaris, after a whole century, asking me to a homecoming?!”

Gemini twirled and suddenly, he was dressed in his sparking purple suit. “I gotta get ready. Thanks witchy poo! You just made my night!”

Gemini snapped his fingers and Mena disappeared behind a tarot card. She found herself back in her room. “Miserable magicaps,” Mena cursed. “Caligari is going to kill me!”