Some people dreamed of love. Other people dreamed of conflict.

Robin dreamed of cake.

Not just cake; rooms of it. Rooms made of it. She walked through spongy halls, heels clicking on marzipan tiles. Robin's dream took her into a palace of confections, with towers and domes like the Taj Mahal, frosted in delicate whorls of color. She lived now in a sugarspun fairy tale.

More marvelous than this place, though, was her dress. Layers of cake hung from her waist to her ankles, done up like a cupcake or a ball gown. Licorice bows hung off of every creamy drape, and she wore a belt of candied pecans and sugared berries and chocolate roses. Her hair - which, at least in her dreams, was silky and long and perfectly kept - was done up in a spectacularly gorgeous french twist, looking itself much like a dollop of strawberry cream. Best of all was the tiara that was seated effortlessly upon her brow, with shining little candy buttons like gemstone drops.

That she should not be alone in this place was especially pleasing. For, shadowing her every step of the way was another girl, seeming very near to her age and very familiar in her manners. The dress she wore was plainer than Robin's, though no less appealing; a frock of silky caramel and ruffled whipped cream, with a beaded string of glazed strawberries adorning her hair. This girl, Robin knew, was her servant. She would keep Robin company for now and forever, and they walked together for long stretches, their course mapped only by Robin's whim.

They had come to the grand gallery now; a place where masters dipped their brushes into frosting, carefully mixing the colors, to describe great works of art upon the walls and ceiling. Admiring these, Robin felt overtaken by feelings of joy and pride. "Isn't our palace so lovely?" Robin sighed.

"It is." The servant spoke, as always, in short sentences. Her manners were polite, make no mistake, and she moved with all the graces of the court; she simply found little need for conversation, and made no unnecessary words. Sometimes this annoyed Robin, who would have preferred a livelier companion - but sometimes it pleased her, to have someone that was always so efficient, who commonly agreed with her, and who sought to satiate her needs and whims above all else.

Speaking of which. "I think that I am hungry now," Robin remarked, having spent several minutes already contemplating a mural of a boggart's journey upon the wall.

The servant regarded her question with the same mild tone as always. "What then shall you eat?"

This was quite a question! For there was an unlimited world of taste perfection around her - the sugar-glass chandeliers and rich berry-sauce tapestries, vaulted angel food chapels and luscious chocolate velvet doorways. Among all these things, how could Robin choose? To taste one, she would have to deny another; and how could she deny any?

There was a simple solution, of course. "Bring me a little of everything," Robin declared, "and I will choose which is best to eat!"

Swiftly enough, they were in the dining hall. It was a magnificant room filled with cake-pillow couches and chairs, with a grand table nearly as far as the eye could see. On it were served small slices of cake gathered from every room of the palace - and the palace had many rooms, certainly, for the plates filled the entire table. With nothing less than sheer delight, Robin began down the length of the table, admiring the many dishes that were laid out for her. There were many different things here, each with their own charm; fine cakes and bizarre ones, as many colors and toppings and fillings as could be imagined, all served on fine plates that seemed like china, but were likely just as edible as the cake they hosted. Seeing her choices, though, Robin was still unsure how she was to make a decision - so many, and all so perfect!

But one cake caught her eye, and she stopped. It was no pleasure that had drawn her attention, but a fast-growing disgust.

"What is this?" Robin turned the plate on the table, a pout fighting its way onto her face. The pathetic piece that sat upon it was damp and unappealing; a sickly mold grew upon it like a cancer. "This piece isn't fit for a buzzard!" she proclaimed. "Where did this come from?"

"The lower levels," the servant replied meekly.

"Well! This just won't do!" And the girl was on her feet, striking an open hand with her fist. "Take me to where you got this, and I will see for myself!"

And so they walked from the dining room. On their way, they passed many halls of great beauty and many rooms of fine decor. At last they came to a heavy door set in the wall, slightly foreboding by its size. The servant opened it for them, and they proceeded down a short stairwell into the lower levels of the castle.

"These are the dungeons." The servant tipped a hand to the many cells that stretched down the hall - all strangely unoccupied, but with their own peculiar sadness. Even pretty places like this had darker corners, she supposed. Still, there was something about those cinnamon-stick bars that made her uneasy; the sound of buzzing pests flitting through the air; a constant drip, dripping from some hidden corridor.

"Ugh! It smells of rot," Robin noticed suddenly, clamping a hand over her nose and mouth.

The servant raised one finger, drawing a line straight to the side. "The walls." Robin's gaze followed - and indeed, she saw, the walls seemed somewhat slick here. Not quite molding like the slice on the table, but certainly not fresh.

"Aha! We must be getting close, then," Robin observed. "Let's go deeper - we must find the source!"

There was a door ahead that was running over with molasses. It opened to the servant's key, revealing a dark staircase, and down it they went. A sense of foreboding had begun to climb over Robin's mood at this point, but she tried not to let it bother her. It was important, after all, that they find the source of this rot - she should not let herself be distracted from that goal. At the landing of the staircase, there was another door. This one, Robin herself had to open with a key around her neck (funny, that she shouldn't have noticed it was there until now!)

Instruments hung up on the walls - terrible, sharp things, wicked things, like metal spatulas and filling-bags and cake servers. An oven blazed away in the back of the room, and cookie cutters covered in old dough were littered all over the floor. There was a wooden table here. A red, sticky jelly was congealed on the ground around it, and laid out on it was the form of a man - a real person, Robin thought, like herself and the servant - whose rib cage was cut open, and whose innards were gone from it.

"The torture chambers," the servant announced.

Broken bones scattered the ground, and Robin's toe disturbed a small pile - the sound it made was not unlike real bone, she thought. She looked again, queasily, to the eviscerated form laid out on the rack. Was that really jelly, Robin wondered, or something worse?

"Who killed this man?" Robin asked. Even as she did, her heart began to flutter and pound; her eyes began to water, as though she might cry. There was an answer she already felt, one that she denied, but it was inevitable in its realization.

The servant looked over the scene dispassionately. "You did."

And so she had. Robin remembered it now; cutting the man open to see what he was made of, to find out if he was cake like the rest of this place. There'd been no harm meant in the action, only curiosity. She thought now that she might have eaten his heart; she thought now that it might have tasted good. Seeing him now, in fact - listening to his insides go drip, dripping onto the floor - she felt certain that she had done these things.

"Oh. So I did." Robin felt queasy to see what she had done. She thought she should cry, so she did; and then she thought she should continue on, so they did.

Robin knew that they were proceeding toward a new goal now, though neither of them had said a word of it. It was dream-knowledge, dream-certainty. She knew that there were pieces of this man missing; and where they were, Robin thought, the rot must have been born from. If they were to find the source of this plague, they needed to go to wherever they had disposed of the rest of this man.

The halls where they walked now had movement; squishing, scurrying things that defied definition, clinging near the walls, breathing in sharp little squeals. Robin made a little squeak and shied away from the rotten corners, but the servant made a gesture to put her at ease. Not that it really worked, of course, but Robin reluctantly proceeded forward all the same. They came to a room after a long while of walking. There was some dim lighting - Robin didn't know from where, but she didn't think about it either - by which she could see the servant stop ahead of here, and raise an arm. "We're here."

What the servant pointed to now was a trapdoor in the floor. It was the first thing that Robin had seen, other than the living bodies of herself and her servant, that was not organic - it was iron, a dull and dark metal, with a heavy ring set in it. The room hosting it was nothing short of noxious; the ceiling was sinking downward, the walls were covered with fungus. Robin took care not to touch any of them as she paced her way to the center of the room, her shoes squelching in a rank sewage.

This was where it was, then; the offal pit. Where they had buried the discards. Where the castle had begun to rot.

Robin hadn't thought much about what she was to do now. She would need to remove the source of decay from the castle, she supposed; throw it over the walls, where it would be out of mind. She should send for some sort of bucket, that she might carry it out, or perhaps servants to do it for her. If she had been thinking at all of what she should be doing, perhaps, she might have.

But instead, she saw only a door before her. And within dreams, doors had only one purpose, and Robin was not one to deny a thing its only true calling. So she wrapped her hands around the rung and heaved it open a few measly inches.

Inches were too much, however. Spewing from the opening was a stream of foul, rotting liquid. Robin dropped the trapdoor back into its seating, but it was too late; the hem of her dress was soaked in the stuff. It was absorbed quickly into the stuff that made the skirt, spoiling it quickly. Robin observed it with a faint sense of disappointment as the stain spread out along the hem. When it continued to pool, though, taking up a larger and larger space, Robin's disappointment became alarm.

"It's growing," she realized, traces of horror starting to kick in. "It's- it's growing, all over my skirt. What should happen if it grows over me?" Robin envisioned herself overcome by the rot, suffocating in it. Her heart turned to ice, a frozen lump in her chest, and her eyes turned to the servant. "What should I do?"

"Dig it out." Even now, the servant was calm - so damned calm. She made a motion with her fingers, like scooping out dirt. "Do not let it spread."

Robin understood. She began ripping off shreds of her pastry-dress between terrified gasps, trying to tear all the rotting portions off, stop the spread. But Robin was not able to keep up. Every piece of skirt she tore off, the mold had gotten just a little further then she could get at. "I, I can't," she gulped, ripping off a ribbon and throwing it aside like a snake (and in fact, as it struck the ground, it hissed and slithered off.) "I can't -- help me, I can't --"

"Faster. You need to move faster."

But there was no way to move quickly enough. It was always one step in front of her - alone, her hands couldn't be rid of the stuff. And no matter how she pleaded for help, the servant would only stand there and advise her - dig it out, faster, dig it out.

Finally, when there were just shreds of the dress left, Robin realized what she needed to do. With a final rip, she simply tore the garment off of her, flinging it away. Getting rid of the fancy trappings, the thing she should have done all along, if only she weren't so skittish of bearing herself without clothing in front of another.

The dress removed, Robin panted. She felt sweat running down her skin - it was drip, dripping from her fingertips now. And quiet, as if in confession (for she felt little pride then), Robin murmured - "I did it."

Then the servant lifted her finger, pointing to Robin's hand. "Dig it out." And Robin looked down, and watched the end of her world begin.

That drip, dripping from her fingertips wasn't sweat. It was the rot that was accumulating at her fingers, where she'd been ripping at her dress. And it was burrowing under her skin, and it was growing.

It ran in little furrows along her skin, greying and browning. The skin grew saggy, like with age, defining the bones and veins of her hand. At the slightest touch, these sunken pools would split. Like an apple gone old and bad, her flesh underneath was a horrendous mush. It was rancid, and it reeked as the skin peeled itself off, slimy globs that would go drip, dripping to the ground. They would wiggle there like slugs, taking life of their own, and began a slow crawl toward her feet.

And there was the servant again, telling her, "Dig it out," so she did - began ripping at the flesh of her arm, trying to fling the decaying flesh away from her. One of the flesh-globs began to crawl up her foot. It attached to her leg like a leech, pumping in a poisonous rot that would began to spread up her legs. It was then - only then - that Robin began to scream. She stomped the ground as she ripped at her limbs, but it was far too late. Her entire body was withering and rotting. It entered her lungs like a mucus, forcing her to cough out putrid gunk. She could feel it creeping up her neck, slick and slimy, eating through her trachea.

Her back fell against the molding, mushy wall. The material here was hardly solid at all; it accepted her body graciously, like being sucked into bog of thick sewage. The rotted cake began to overtake her vision, and her cheeks began to rot out and her tongue cover with a viscous slime. The servant simply stared after her, watching with dead eyes as Robin whimpered her last, "Please, help me--"

The dream, mercifully, ended.