Cassidy finds herself in a deep, dark forest - the details are fuzzy, in the dream it's just the idea of woodlands, trees without detail but with plenty of shadows between them. There's a prowling and a growling in the darkness.

“I'm not sure about this…” Floopsy Bun-bun nervously fiddles with her ears, watching as Cassidy tosses and turns in her bed. “I know this is supposed to make things better in the end, but I never like seeing her having a nightmare!” At the head of the bed, Grrlock puts the finishing touches to a collage of stickers - not a dreamcatcher this time, turns out the personalisation matters more than the form.

Pretty Princess Penelope stands in a circle with the other ritualists, at the top of a dark tower, humming to herself as they work. In the middle of the circle there's a pool of shadow, showing the view of a monster-filled woodland. One of the mages there huffs in frustration. “OK, sure, we're getting some good power through now - but what's the point if we're just setting ourselves up to fail?”

Cassidy's heart is racing, as she looks from shadow to shadow. Her class had just had a woodland survival lesson, and yes it had come with plenty of scary stories, but also lots of advice? Surely? Even if she can't think of it right now… Wait, there's a stream - and downstream tends to mean it'll join to some kind of river, and most rivers have some kind of civilisation…

“We can go in there and rescue her if it gets too bad - we're keeping an eye on things. But Penelope thinks it's important that she has a chance to rescue herself, and then we can be there to comfort her afterwards.” The toy robot rests a manipulator on Floopsy's shoulder, keeping its voice steady despite its own doubts.

The mage stares at a glowing crystal. “See, that little ray of hope? That's costing us charge - pure, unadulterated terror, that's what we need.” They look to the other mages, who studiously ignore them and continue with the casting. “I told you, coming in from a bedroom, she doesn't really understand fear.” Pretty Princess Penelope pays him no mind, but hums a little louder as the shadows of the bats outside the tower flicker with the storm raging overhead.

The stream leads to a clearing - and Cassidy sees a small plane flying overhead. Thinking quickly, she pulls out her notebook - the paper is glossy and shiny, a pain to write on but it'll serve as a reflector, even if the sun is a bit of a strange purplish colour, and even if the sun seems to have a single spiralling tusk and fins for some reason.

“OK, time to head in, but we wait for the scene change, OK? She needs to get herself out of the nightmare and we'll be there to help once it's done.” Floopsy and Grrlock focus on the collage on Cassidy's bedside table, and find themselves at the edge of a deep, dark, forest.

Bats pour through the window of the tower, flocking to the upstart mage and pulling them back as a thousand tiny feet grip their robes and fur. They try to cling onto the window frame, but there's too many pairs of wings pulling them, and they vanish out the window of the tower. As they fall, the crystal in their hand glows brightly, charged to the brim with fear.

Cassidy steps out of the small plane - she's not quite sure how it landed in such a small clearing, but that's not important right now, what's important is that it's dropped her back at the camp with her friends! She runs up and hugs Floopsy and Grrlock in turn, and they reassure her that everything is OK, congratulating her on getting herself out of there.

Pretty Princess Penelope drifts slowly down the outside of the tower - the fear she's gathered tonight giving her enough power to practice a few of the things she's been learning. She kneels gently next to the mage, their body held a few inches above the rock. “You're right, we could get more power if we wanted to do things the old way, but I think you're missing something about fear. Fear isn't just the thing that fuels our magic, it's also a wonderful teacher in the right circumstances. For example, Cassidy has been taught that she can save herself if she can find a moment of calm to think, and you have been taught that if you keep questioning me, next time I won't ask the bats to catch you on the way down.”

The wandering hero crests the top of the cliff, her shield slung on her back to let her make the climb. She pulls out a crumpled bit of paper, the poorly-scrawled map of where the local hunters think the dragon roosts. This should be the place. Shading her eyes against the sun, she looks around, ducking behind a rock as she sights it flying in on the horizon.

Something is clearly wrong - its flight is erratic, sometimes dropping for heart-stopping moments at a time, and pulling its head back to snap and spray fire at something on its back. As it desperately swoops closer, it becomes clear that that's a “someone”, and Ruri grins as she realises what she's seeing.

At this point, Brawn was willing to admit that leaping off the tallest cliff he could find onto the back of the dragon wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever done. But it probably wasn't the stupidest either. As the dragon demonstrated that its neck was indeed flexible enough to spray fire over its own back, Brawn was thankful his sword was ridiculously huge enough to hide behind, and considered it maybe in the top 10 of bad plans. He drove the blade deeper, the movement giving him a good look over the edge of the beast, at the drop below. OK, maybe top 5 then.

The dragon plummets from the sky, coming in for a crash landing on the clifftop where Ruri waits. It's dead before it hits the ground, as is pretty clear from the fact its head lands several meters away from its neck. Ruri reaches out, her magic catching Brawn before he tumbles off the cliff.

“That still counts as my kill!” Brawn insists, as he gets himself back onto steady ground, wiping the blood from his sword. “But let's say…. 10% of the reward money, and you get to tell your side of things first once we get back to the town and say we've solved their dragon problem?”

It took finesse to link the realm to both Jordan and Cassidy's room. It took a little ingenuity to add a third room into the network, as they made more friends. After that, it was fairly easy for a while - the bonds of friendship making links between the children (and their toys, when they got to meet up on playdates), and the Prince of Doors working his magic to open a portal along that connection.

It got a little harder after that - Jordan was a friendly kid, but there's a limit to how many people one child can hold in their heart (even if it can be quite a high limit) - and when a new child came to the school, nervous and shaky and not sleeping properly, those that had been through it before knew they needed to find a way to help.

The tower previously occupied by Him contained a number of arcane and esoteric tomes - including the linking ritual that had brought Him to Jordan's room - and with every mage of Canterspire loyal to the new order, there were enough researchers to figure out how to adapt it so it wouldn't destabilise the existing connections, and could form a link even if there was already something else under the target bed.

There was an argument - this magic would require a lot of fear, and it would need to be fresh - but a dream was crafted to mitigate some of the concerns. Each of Jordan's friends had a dream with a choice - they could leave, keeping themselves safe, and have nothing to worry about for the night, or they could brave a labyrinth of monsters to rescue someone they didn't know, all they knew was that that person was in danger. Each of those children had had nightmares - each of them knew how bad their fears could be, but each of them knew those fears could be faced. They didn't all chose to brave the dungeon - some went to find help, recognising that their own skills would not be enough to make the situation better, and for those children their toys came in to support them, but enough did that the jolt of terror tempered with determination was enough to make the link.