Unbeknownst to Ren, while Aurelia sleeps beside him, she's giving Danny a tour. The evening has been peaceful so far. The pair have made it as far as the lake, to the treehouse even, when Aurelia stops at the water's edge and informs her companion, "I'm gonna show you what it's like to see your own sleepin' self. It's the difference between bein' in a dream and bein' in the dreamlands."

Thundersnow blows out a breath and his white mane twitches. He turns a dark eye on the Treehouse, and something in his coat shimmers, flickering along the flat blue-black hair like light on the surface of the lake, then it disappears deeper inside him. Your-self, not my-self?

Aurelia scratches the horse's mane absently, a soothing and comfortable gesture. "My-self," she clarifies. "Don't worry. You don't gotta see yourself sleepin'. It's a little disconcerting if you ain't used to it. Plus you'll see Ren sleepin', but don't worry. I made him cover his shame."

I am relieved, Thundersnow says with a snort and a shake of his head. There's a pause while he concentrates, and then with that characteristic popping feeling, his oddly colored dreamhorse form collapses into his human form, which is itself only a little less odd. "Won't it be crowded up there?" Danny asks, giving the Treehouse a nervous look. He runs his hands through his hair.

Aurelia shakes her head wryly as she makes her way toward the rope and hatch. "Nah. You'll see." Under normal circumstances she'd have to shinny up the rope. Tonight, in this place and state, she merely gets a good few steps' head start and reaches the hatch after a rather lofty jump. Then she squirrels through it and disappears within. "Now just do what I did," she instructs. She doesn't keep her voice down. Chances are the sleepers can't hear her.

"...do what you did, right," Danny echoes, not sounding so sure of himself. After a few fruitless attempts he stops to relax, and lets out a slow breath. "Don't try so hard," he reminds himself, and makes a leap for the hatch, this time concentrating not on the jumping, but the destination--the Treehouse. It's not a very controlled jump by any means, but he makes it, and awkwardly wriggles in through the opening that wasn't meant for someone quite so big as himself.

Aurelia sits back on her haunches, grinning impishly at Danny as she says, "There you go, darlin'. See, you're a quick study." Inside the treehouse it's an interesting study in physics. It should be smaller on the inside than the outside, and there shouldn't be so much floor space. Hell, the floor space doesn't even seem to be entirely accounted for, and the walls have just thrown themselves here and there where convenient to allow the pair room to maneuver. One area that is unmoved is the nest, where two lumps in the blankets imply the place is occupied. "They can't see us," she tells Danny knowingly. "Or hear us, or nothin'. One of them is me, and the other is in his own dream."

Danny can't hide the look of relief on his face that the Treehouse isn't as cramped as he'd feared it might be. He stands up, surprised that there's even room for that motion, and looks around curiously, eyes eventually falling on Ren and Aurelia's sleeping selves. "Does it look this way because you want it to? Or is it just like this because...we need it to be?"

Strange as the structure currently appears, some of it is clearly as it is. Inside the treehouse is quiet and dim, no sound but for two set of soft, measured breathing, and no light but the moon filtering in through the mesh of the lake-side of the structure, none from the places that aren't as one would expect. The blanket-curtains have been opened in deference to the season, but the bed is still piled with linens in recognition of the temperature -- and possibly to cover such things as Aurelia felt Danny might be squeamish about. The bed is indeed occupied; Serendipity's curled closely with the corax, arms wrapped about her and mouth and nose half-buried in her hair. The pillows are covered with the combined blackness of their freed locks; it makes a nice contrast to the fabric.

Aurelia lays on her back, in quiet repose, with the look of a funeral if not for the vibrant color to her skin and her chest rising and falling. Her hands clasp a stalk of fennel, folded atop her chest where one might have placed a lily if she weren't merely rehearsing for the great hereafter. It makes the sleepy curling on the kin's behalf look like a protective thing, whether or not it's thus intended. The shadow of Aurelia glances down at the pair, her brow furrowed. "I really ain't that short," she insists. Then, glancing back to Danny, she replies, "With enough practice, you can make little changes. You just got to remember that stuff here ain't like stuff in the physical world. Mess with it, tweak it enough times, you get good at it."

"You look, kind of...sick," Danny says, fascination and concern both coloring his tone. He takes her comments as the chance to stop looking at her sleeping form, and asks her dream-self, "Changes, like, how I look? It's kind of hard, still, to make the horse-form work. But it's in there, not like the others. I can't feel any of those. Can you make yourself stronger, or anything like that?"

Aurelia shakes her head and replies, "Not sick. Just not there." She glances at Danny and grins. "Because I'm here. See?" She drifts closer, crouching to regard Ren with a somewhat sad, fond look. She reaches down to stroke his hair, but her fingers drift through the strands, ethereal. "You just need to practice," she tells Danny solemnly. "With strength, it's like the waking world. You train, you work at it. You earn it. It comes, but not overnight."

Danny nods and rubs the back of his neck. "I suppose I should do that, in case they come sniffing around again. There were more than I thought there'd be." He looks around the treehouse again. "Do I need to train here? Or can I in my own dreams?"

Aurelia scowls briefly and replies, "There were more than I thought there'd be, too. But this is just to get you familiar with..." And then she stops, jerking her head up as she looks around. In the blink of an eye, literally, she's at the window, looking down at the lake. "Shit," she comments, quiet. "Danny, stay down."

"What is it?" Danny moves so he's not in direct view of the window, but can at least look out at an angle, and crouches to further reduce visibility. He keeps his voice low, only just above a whisper. "More of them?"

Aurelia shakes her head, then ducks away from the window. "I ain't sure." She crouches down beside Ren, looking over the sleeping pair at Danny. "I'd rather not fight tonight. Can't really afford to lose just now."

Danny gives Aurelia a puzzled look. "You don't die if you lose when you're dreaming, do you? Why not, then?"

Aurelia gives Danny a sharp look, which turns somewhat embarrassed as she explains, "I ain't been feeling well. Kind of, uh, got in a fight last night. Look, if it heads toward town, we'll go after it, but..." And she's cut off by an eerie howl and the sound of scratching around the base of the tree.

"Oh," Danny says, his expression turning grim. "You shouldn't go out alone anymore, not without me. We work good together, and if there's the two of us, at least we'll maybe get beat up less, or get rid of more of them." He stands up abruptly at the sound, but there's as much anger as fear and excitement in his movements, perhaps even more. "Those little bastards are getting ballsy," he growls.

Aurelia reaches for her sabre, up til now sheathed in the sash around her waist, in the dream-fabric swathes of blue she wears. "Must've heard us," she mutters. "Danny, get behind me. I don't wanna lop yer head off." The dimensions of the treehouse shift and writhe, as though they can't decide who they want to accommodate -- the benandanti, or the wolf-like monstrosity hauling itself up through the hatch.

Danny obediently moves behind Aurelia, and lacking any useful weapon in his human form, settles for giving the hatch a baleful glare. He murmurs, "Need to get some fennel..." to himself.

Aurelia shakes her head and says, "Dunno if it'll even work." She's got a calm, focused Zen about her, the way she gets when she's about to kick the shit out of something in her dreams. The thing turns on the pair, growling low in its throat. Then lunges. Aurelia strikes, but... it's not there. What's there is a jagged, silvery rift, and the space around Ren torn asunder. "Son of a bitch!" she snarls and, without even thinking, she makes a lunge for the rift.

Danny follows behind Aurelia immediately, barely a step behind, and gets a handful of her gossamer clothing just before they both enter.

It's night, but it isn't dark. Light comes from all over, above and around, all sorts of colours -- signs, lamps, neon, and gaslamps with coloured shades all adding to the shininess. The buildings are tall and close together, in varying stages of disrepair, but even the ones missing several upper stories, or most of them, are being used on the lower floors. There are people, lots of people, of all shapes and sizes, laughing and talking and walking the sidewalks and street, mostly in couples and groups, and the occasional bicycle or powered... thing... makes its way through the throngs. Ren is sitting in one of the first floor windows, on the sill, chatting with a flame-haired young man standing on the street below, and he looks... well, much like himself, except somehow moreso. Larger than life, but not literally. Well. A little taller, maybe. And the coat fits him better, more like he was the intended wearer. The whole place has something of the atmosphere of a celebration, just radiating life. Except for the part just down the middle of the street, where a huge snarling hellhound sort of creature has just appeared, sending at first only a few people close by into a panic, those further out not yet seeming to realise its presence.

Tumbling after the hellhound is a woman swathed in blue gossamer, unsheathing a sleek curved sabre whose metal gleams with a somewhat surreal light. Before her tumbling brings her to the ground, there is a snap of air hitting wings, and the Corax in her mingled form rises, a black-winged angel of, to judge by her expression, righteous fury. "Son of a bitch!" she greets the radiating panic.

Danny enters after Aurelia, losing his hold on her clothing as she takes her winged form and hitting the ground with a clumsy stumble. He gets his bearings and immediately starts shoving through the crowd, aiming for the hound-beast and the open area it's forming based on its presense alone.

Given the ambient noise and movement of the revel, it can't be the commotion per se that draws Ren's attention to the situation taking shape. Maybe it's the quality of the commotion in that area, or a sense that the dream has changed strangely... or just the fact that the problem seems to be approaching where he is. Whatever the cause, he looks away from his companion, brow slightly furrowed as he searches out the source of things, and the sight of the wings and the form to which they're attached elicits a bright, joyous smile of recognition, before other details sink in and dim it. "Rae!" he calls, probably lost in the general din, and hops down from his window, abandoning the redhead and heading toward the corax and company.

Aurelia calls out, "Danny, be careful!" As though the man needed her to tell him to do the obvious. The beast turns on Danny and snarls, snapping its fangs at him like a warning. Aurelia comes to land, the wings folding upon her back, then fading entirely. She lifts the sword and yells, "Hey!" at the beast, who turns to fix her with a vehement glare. Then, without further ado, it turns and lunges for Danny. Unfortunately, she hasn't quite seen Ren yet.

It's a good thing the city street has enough space to accommodate instinctual reactions, because that's exactly how Danny behaves. There's an odd straining sensation to Ren's dream, like some part of it were attempting to change itself outside the wanderings of Ren's mind, and the tension releases with a snap, leaving a blue-black horse with a white mane and tail in place of Danny's human self. Something brilliant shivers across his hide, like muted black lightning, as the shape pops into place. The hound-beast's presence has at least cleared enough room for him to move, and he neighs defiantly, meeting it halfway in a sudden charge that's a near miss for a number of accidental spectators.

More of the crowd is heading away from the monster now, some frightened, some drifting away from it in their normal movement, some just dissolving into non-dream-existence. There are two exceptions, walking against the flow -- Ren, and the somewhat annoyed-looking redhead, who seems to have decided to follow for the time being. Ren moves quickly, not running, but with a walk that covers decidedly more ground in a given time than it should be able to.

Dream time is strange. Though everything happens so quickly, it seems to freeze-frame and replay. The beast lunges. Danny charges, and to his credit, he does manage to trample the thing. Unfortunately, it manages to get its jaws on his throat and tears at his flesh. Aurelia screams furiously. Poor Ren's celebratory consciousness has become ground zero for a bloodbath.

Thundersnow's neigh turns into a high-pitched squeal, and he strikes at the houndbeast with his forelegs savagely, throwing his head about in an attempt to dislodge it. There's an edge of panic in his whinnying, and the blood that's forming where the hound's teeth meet his neck is darker than it should be--in fact, on closer inspection, it's black.

Serendipity can see it properly now, and hear, as well; he moves faster, and as he does, there's a shift, a change. He's still Ren, but the only signs of that are that he was before, that he's still approaching and something about the way he holds himself and the look of his eyes. He looks like a crinos garou, except a little smaller, decidedly more wiry and... well, coyote-like. Most of his jewelry seems to have survived the change, too. While the thing's jaws are occupied, he half leaps, half slides in and goes for its throat in return.

Aurelia draws up short as the horse's bleeding and the attack of another canid causes her to, for some crazy reason, not want to go slashing wildly with her sword. The beast, latched onto the horse's throat, now seems loathe to let go. There is an unholy pleasure in the half-growl, half-squeal it emits. This isn't conducive to it defending itself, though Ren risks talons and hooves. Aurelia, true to her birdlike nature, flits and darts on the perimeter of the fray, ducking in to slash at the beast where there's an opening. Long story short, the thing succumbs, but no one is left unscathed, bleeding, sore, and tired.

Thundersnow stumbles away from the beast as it falls, his neighs low and his breathing labored. There are numerous scratches on his chest and legs now, all of them with that same peculiar blood, which doesn't smell like blood at all. It almost smells like water, lake water that's heavily saturated with minerals. The bite at his neck doesn't seem to have hit any particularly major vessels: it's ugly and bleeding, but not so badly that he's in immediate danger.

Serendipity pulls away from the thing, eyeing it balefully, making sure it isn't about to get back up, and giving its corpse a decidedly vicious kick in the ribs before dropping crosslegged on the suddenly grassy ground, and then dropping onto his back in the grass, stretching out his strange form. He seems perfectly comfortable with it, if somewhat the worse for wear from the fight. The redhead has disappeared. So, in fact, has the city; the surrounding have gone much more rural, and lighter. Midmorning, maybe. He takes a few breaths, and then sits up quite suddenly, shifting into a form more like his usual self, like a werewolf's near-human form, but without the neanderthal edge to things. Just... bigger, and sort of wilder. The reason for the change is clear enough: he looks between the other two, torn between Danny's more obvious and dangerously placed wounds and Aurelia, and speaks. "Rae? ....Danny? You okay?"

Strangely, when Ren kicks the corpse in the ribs, the body buckles, then seems to deflate, as though its substance has left it. Within moments, it's merely dust, gathered up in a breeze and scattered. Aurelia stabs her sabre into the ground and drops onto the grass, scratched and bleeding, her gossamer torn, her hair come lose from its braids and tangled. She crawls over to Thundersnow, tearing off pieces of gossamer to dab at his wounds. "I'll be fine," she says. True, she does look more pissed off than injured, though some of those gashes are nasty. "You okay, Renny? Shit, I'm sorry about this."

Thundersnow grunts and flinches away, his eyes rolling white. Wrong, wrong, hurts. He keeps pacing around, his steps stumbling every now and then, and there's a violent shivering along his hide that sets his skin to rippling in silvery shades. Hurts, hurts. He slows to a stop, swaying unsteadily, and then shifts, snapping into his human form with a muffled grunt of pain. His hand goes to his neck immediately, and he sits down heavily in the grass. Despite the fact that the uncertain quality of his skin makes it impossible to judge the color, he definitely looks like he's going to throw up. "Shit. Shit. This isn't--what I was expecting," he chokes out.

Serendipity reaches into his coat, and comes out with a small bottle, and a handful of bandages, which he shifts over and offers. Well, he offers the bandages; the bottle contains something he seems bent on pouring over both their wounds, though not his own, as yet. It stings when it touches injuries, like alcohol. "'m okay. 'm fine," he assures Aurelia, leaning over and taking a moment out to brush his lips against unbroken skin on the back of her neck, just briefly. "'s nice seein' you. Here. Never saw you here before." He glances up, tilts his head. "Well, seen you =here= before," he corrects, but doesn't seem inclined to delve into things any further. He goes back to first aid. Some of it seems a little strange, but it is, after all, a dream.

Aurelia leans back on her haunches as Thundersnow sways about, then snaps into Danny's form. She watches him with some concern, though her tone is sardonic as she points out, "Well, it is battle." Arching a brow, she gives Ren a dubious and curious look, but prying into the nature of her presence in his dreams will have to wait. She winces at the stinging alcohol, but doesn't try to swat it away. She does try to take the bandages to take over the patching up of people. Not that she has mothering or control issues.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Danny says, surprised by the fact that he can be nauseated enough in someone else's dream to actually throw up. He sits there, eyes closed and jaw working, until he registers that something's happening, and opens them to look at Ren, dazed. In a violent burst of motion, he scrambles away from the wound cleaning, gasping in pain when he manages to land on one of his injured arms and bump his neck in the process. "Don't, *don't*," is about the only intelligent thing he can manage to say. Dark motion twines along his injured arm, then is lost to sight. "Don't," he repeats, weakly.

Serendipity pulls back slightly, startled, and stares at Danny a moment, then starts tending to his own injuries, Aurelia's all having been disinfected. His own wounds actually look as though they're trying to heal themselves while they wait, though they could be doing a better job of it. It's a vague sort of thing. Dreamlike, even.

Aurelia stops fussing over Danny, letting the tatter of gossamer drift to the ground. She draws back, eyeing her own cuts. "You'll be okay," she says to Danny, low toned. "Remember, none of this is real."

Danny collapses onto his back, shivering. "It feels real," he whispers. "It's like wanting to throw up when you can't. I've been hurt before, it's not like this, it's just not." He closes his eyes and tries to slow his breathing, with marginal success. "How did it do that," he asks no one in particular, shuddering again.

Serendipity watches the pair of them, looking as though that niggling feeling that something's not right that sometimes invades dreams has invaded this one. He keeps tending wounds, but there's something about their surroundings that seems just a shade more fragile than before.

Aurelia offers her arm out to Ren, presenting him with a nice gash for his tending endeavors. She watches him, looking at him closely. Perhaps the changing nuances of dreams is something to which she's grown accustomed. "I don't know," she replies, sounding somewhat troubled. "Rather, I know, but I don't know why. Remember what I said about how sometimes they can invade dreams? It's just... it went for Ren. Maybe it was trying to get away."

A fine sheen of sweat has broken out on Danny's skin, and his injuries, unlike Ren's, don't look very intersted in healing. The unpredictable light in his form is definitely concentrated around them, although it doesn't seem to be having any positive effect either. "They're getting...bold. Bolder," he says, his voice faint and distracted. "Got to figure out where they're coming from."

Aurelia's injuries quite obviously take precedence over all others, especially now that Ren's been told not to paay attention to Danny's apparently worse ones, removing the ambivalence in the matter. He fixes them up tenderly, very gentle. "...looked t' me like it went for =him=," he remarks to her, indicating Danny with a tilt of his head.

Aurelia looks over to Danny, and the wounds' stubbornness to heal clearly concerns her. Her own seem bearable. She doesn't fuss about the bandaging. Unconsciously, she reaches out a hand to touch Ren's wrist lightly, a wordless gesture of gratitude. "It came into you," she tells him. Nodding toward Danny, she adds, "It went for Danny when he attacked it. What we can't figure out is why it went here at all." Then, to Danny, she says, "They've got to have a gathering place somewhere around here. I don't like the sound of that."

"Can we find it?" Danny asks after a noticeable pause where he does nothing but breathe steadily. He's dug one of his hands into the ground, holding the grass and earth tightly like he's afraid he's going to float away. "I don't know, what good it'll do though. We can't, we don't know what they look like, when they're awake, so what's left..."

"It... came into me?" Ren arches a brow slightly. "A'ight, I might be easy, but I =do= have standards, an' I can tell you right now I was =never= with =that= thing," he mutters vehemently, finishing up the bandaging. "There's morea them? An' they don't look like that?"

Aurelia rubs at her temples, groaning quietly. "I don't know," she says, sounding a touch irritable. "I don't know. We could try tracking them, maybe. Not now, not right now. We're not in any shape. Danny, honey, you're starting to worry me. You don't look so good." Toward Ren, she adds, "It's long and complicated. You might not even remember it all anyway. Ask me when I'm awake."

Danny musters a weak smile. "Really, because...I'm feeling just...absolutely fantastic," he whispers. "I bet this is going to feel great when I wake up...too."

"When you're..." Ren trails off, and the edges of the dream waver for a few moments, and then solidify, a determined feeling to them. "Oh. Because you're asleep. I'm asleep. This is a dream," he says, and glances around again, looking at the world around him with new eyes. Oddly, something else changed with the resolidifying: he looks normal again. Completely normal, not just not shifted, but just about exactly like he does in real life. He glances between the pair again, gaze ending up just resting on Aurelia.

Aurelia leans back, sitting on the ground and reaching for her sword. She regards Danny, then Ren, then Danny again. Back and forth. Her expression is wild-eyed, not quite sane. "We shouldn't be here," she says, and as if some internal decision has been made, she gets to her feet, all smooth efficiency, and the near mania is suppressed, replaced by a grim know-it-all air of one who is fully going to take control of the situation. "Ren, we need to talk when we're awake. Danny, we need to get you back to where you belong. I've got some hunting to do."

Danny nods faintly and rolls onto his hands and knees, then stumbles to his feet. He winces and holds his hand to his neck, now covered with the strange black blood, and he finally notices that it doesn't look right. Pulling his hand away to stare at it, he murmurs, "That looks...different." A cautionary sniff, and his head jerks back in surprise. "It smells different too."

Serendipity stands also, a quick, smooth movement, and looks vaguely distraught. "You're leaving?" he asks, quiet and quite clearly addressed just to the Corax.

Aurelia says to Danny, "Right. We're going to want to look into just why you're bleeding like that." Then, to Ren, she nods curtly. She could be a soldier for how impassive she's managed to become. Not cruel, just... brusque. Businesslike. "Danny's injured. I don't know how bad it is. Whatever it is won't kill him, but it might put him down for awhile. Meanwhile, this thing might've had friends. They hunt in packs." She pauses, then adds, quieter, "You're not safe while we're here."

Danny wearily shakes his head. "I want to go with you, and help," he says, gallantly swaying on his feet. "Maybe I can...draw them off or something. Bait. I can't...just lay there by myself, waiting to see if you...come back."

"'m I safe when you're not?" Ren counters. "Lemme help; I helped with this one, didn't I? I'll go help get them. Then Danny c'n heal an' not hafta worry so much..."

Aurelia shakes her head, holding up a hand, the one not clasping her sabre, and says, "No, listen. Ren, I don't know if I can take you out of here, and even if I could, sugar, it'll take more strength than I've got right now. Danny, you aren't in any shape. I'd rather let them get away tonight than put either of you at risk."

Danny nods, not so much accepting Aurelia's knowledge and judgement as realizing that apparently a conversation is occurring where he needs to affirm something, and he does. He walks over to stand by Aurelia, taking her free hand with the cleaner of his. It has far less blood on it than the other one, although a good deal of dirt and grass has worked its way under his nails. The texture of his skin is more chaotic than usual, with a flushed, prickling feeling, like it were writhing to get away from her.

Serendipity watches her a moment, sizing up the likelihood of effective arguing. "...then soon?" he asks, and steps in, slipping an arm loosely around her waist and brushing his lips past her cheek, toward her ear. "...and come back, then," he murmurs softly. "When you know he's home. Come back, so I know you're safe. I'll stay here, I'll be home." He indicates a decidedly good-sized caravan wagon on a nearby hill, though it seems as though to him there's no reason he should need to explain this to her, it's merely a gesture of speaking.

Aurelia glances between them both again, and the calm flickers a bit, wavers. There's a tempest of emotion suppressed, and it only shows for a split second. She leans forward to give Ren a kiss on the cheek. "I'm right beside you," she says softly. "Once this path closes, I don't know if I can walk it again, but I'll be there, Ren. In the morning. I'm not going anywhere. I promise." She then sheathes her sabre and turns toward Danny, clasping his arm as she says, "Hold to me. I don't want you to get lost."

The effort of staying on two feet is trying enough that Danny doesn't bother answering with anything other than a blink and a squeeze to Aurelia's hand. His eyes aren't staying focused on much, although occasionally he fixates on her sabre, and that helps.

Serendipity nods slightly, though it looks as though he may not entirely understand this, not at the moment. He lets her go, reluctantly, and steps back, hands sliding into his coat pockets.

Aurelia slips an arm around Danny, under his shoulders, as if her slight self could prop him up, which she does, somehow. "Okay," she says, as if it's now all settled. "I'll explain it all in the mornin', Ren. I promise. Danny? Don't die before I get you home."

Danny finds the strength to laugh, but there's a shadow of hysteria in the sound. "I can't die in a dream," he insists with nowhere near the level of certainty required to make it believable.

Serendipity nods, watching them. He stays where he is, and the entire dream seems almost to be holding its breath, waiting expectantly.

Aurelia closes her eyes, shoulders sagging a bit, but then she stands upright, Danny supported, and she says, "Don't tempt fate. It hits back." With that, she turns, looking around with her nose to the air like she's sniffing something out, a trail to follow perhaps.

Danny follows with unsure steps, trying his best not to lean on Aurelia except when he has to, which is regrettably most of the time. "Somewhere over there," he murmurs, vaguely tipping his head. "I think I can...smell it. Something like that..."

Serendipity stays where he is, just watching, until he's alone again in his dreams. He turns, then, and heads toward the hill, until he disappears within the wagon there, and the entire area is still and quiet.