I didn’t see my mom again after that. I didn’t need to.
We made our way back to Bois Rogue and the Order the following day. With All Souls over, the Order was buzzing with justicars and sorcerers fresh from the two-day holiday. And I was back at it again.
I entered the observatory with a sort of mired determination, my eyes steady on the subject with black bag in hand. My heels clicked across the morn as I muttered a breathy, “Good morning,” to Bira.
Who was not Bira.
Someone else stood in his place. A handsome woman with a scar crisscrossing the bridge of her equine nose. She nodded curtly, her golden bob bouncing with the gesture, and fiddled with her white-gold plated armor.
“Bira?” I asked, almost tripping before catching myself near the trundle bed.
“Other business,” she said, waving her hand, “he’ll be back on the morrow.”
I nodded, unsteady now, but still determined. So, things change. So, the one time Bira doesn’t show up he doesn’t even notify me. Tell me why. I shook my head and took my seat near Aeries bed. The light from the massive windows beside him fell over me as if the sun had acknowledged that today would be the day.
I took a black stone from my bag. Upon coming back to the Order, there had been three near perfect lunar obsidian artfully scattered on my table with a note underneath, “From A. Espen. With these, you’ll do the impossible.” It felt good to have everyones belief in me.
Well, almost everyone.
Axelle leaned on the door post and regarded me from across the room, “You two have a happy All Souls?”
“Did you?”
Her ruby red lips perked up into a smile, “I went to the Unicorn District myself,” she shimmied her chest, “see anything different?”
The corset-like vest Circle staff wore was often worn with a loose chiffon blouse beneath it. Instead of research eggshell she wore, well, red.
“Shall I write you up for a uniform violation?”
Axelle rolled her blue eyes, “I would have said that it was totally worth it but,” she sighed theatrically, sliding down the door post, “Bira isn’t here.”
The justicar stand in snorted, “I am,” she said, “and you look beautiful.”
Axelle huffed, “Thanks.”
“I’m stepping in, now,” I said, “quiet, please.”
The room hushed.
It’s always a marvel when I move through the process of opening a Dream without Dreaming myself. The lunar obsidian from Espen, one stone, hung between my two fingers. I centered it on Aeries clammy forehead and waited for the light to hit it just right. When it does, white-yellow-gray light springs from all facets of the crystal. The light changes often and today, gold shone as if the universe knew I could do it.
With the sun peering on the crystal, I hung my hand over the crystal and pulled what looked like a graying rag from the crystal. With the magic burning my fingertips, I flung it inches from my face. The gray became a swirling portal.
The justicar stand in took my chair as I stood. I glanced back at her, giving her the nod I would often give Bira, and walked into the portal.
Tar gummed my senses. The scent of burning egg with shells cracking beneath my weight. I shut my eyes and opened them just to fall back, heart a wild beast in my chest.
Aerie was a man who always looked perpetually shocked. Even after all of these rotations of working with him and talking him through the process, he still hadn’t told me why he had been locked up in the heart of the Order.
White eyes on me, he offered me a hand and pulled me up. When our hands touched, that was when I saw it.
Its rib bones took up the dusty sky. Its heart bled red in its chest. Its skull, pocked deeply by two black ovals, stared straight ahead into nothing.
“At first I thought it would kill me,” Aerie said as we both stared up at it, “but it’s just been standing like this ever since you left.”
“Have you tried…,” I honestly never thought I would get this far, “…talking to it?”
“How?”
According to my research, to sever a Dreamer from their nightbeast, the Dreamer had to be the one to fell it. But I did not even know if Aerie knew how to fight.
Perhaps the still beating heart in its chest held some answers.
“Aerie,” I said, “I’m not Dreaming, so I can’t change anything. But you can. Do you see its heart?”
The skeletons skull swiveled from side to side slowly, like it was looking for something.
Aerie nodded.
“Conjure a bow. Pierce it.”
The skeletons gaze snapped to us.
“Quickly,” I added, pulling at the back of his tunic as I slowly backed away.
We had been through this before, how Dreamers could alter their Dreams if they were aware that they were even in one. A yew longbow materialized in his right hand.
“I never learned how to shoot.”
“Just give yourself the knowledge!”
The skeletons bones creaked and groaned as the thing began crawling toward us, blackpit eyes on the bow, on me, on him.
“Quickly now!”
He let loose and arrow and the skeleton batted it back at us. I brought my hand to my chest and tossed my energy before us, creating a barrier that flicked the arrow back weakly.
It charged. We sprinted. The landscape was vast and barren and flat. If we kept running like this, we’d tire and the thing would either kill us or force itself through the portal that I had created to get in here. Even if Bira were here, I don’t think he’d be able to take this hulking monstrosity alone. The entire Order would have to band together, or worse.
“Create a hill—something!” I cried, “Make some cover for us!”
The ground began to bend and moan. I pulled him by his starched collar and threw him behind the earthen barrier that grew to reach the sky, then slid behind it myself. The ground shook as the skeleton rushed to meet us, only to be met by the barrier.
Think, North, think!
“I’m going to get its attention,” I told Aerie, “and when I do, you run out and hit it in the heart.”
Aerie swallowed, trembling, “I’ve never done something like this. I don’t think I can.”
“This is your Dream,” I reminded him, “you created that thing, and only you can bring it down. If you back down now, we’ll both be stuck here and you’ll never wake up.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
I ground my teeth, “You can’t be afraid of the outside world forever!”
Dreamers often fell into Demises because the outside world—the Day—had lost its appeal. Whatever he did to get himself jailed in the Order had cordoned off the Day forever in his mind.
“You need to face whatever it is you’re afraid of. If you stay here, you’ll die.”
Aerie swallowed, but got up. He nodded, hand on the bow. Ready.
I sprinted.
“Hey!” I screamed, waving my hands frantically in a circle, “Over here meatless man! That’s right!”
He doesn’t want to wake up.
The skeleton roared and charged, flinging turf as it did. I stood my ground and created an energy barrier as I watched Aerie sprint from behind the earthen barrier and let loose an arrow.
Why are you making him wake up?
It hit its target. The creature screamed and light exploded from its dark eyes. It met the earth in a heap of bones, making permanent imprints in the grass. Above, stars began falling. The dust settling, sparkling on the ocean of bones before me.
What you are doing here is wrong.
The booming voice cut through my thoughts, tried to pull me out of the Dream with its explosiveness, but by now I was used to it. This was another embodiment of Him, but—I assumed—a weakened version. I was getting to that blue skinned divine. Good.
A gut-wrenched screech speared through the air as my ankle caught fire. The skeleton wasn’t dead, simply broken. And with its massive bony hand, it had broken through my barrier and was pulling me across the dirt toward its mouth.
Where had I gone wrong? Aerie stood on the opposite side of the body, shell-shocked eyes wider than I had ever seen them. The bow had ceased existing and he just watched as the thing tried to eat me.
It wasn’t dead. Then, what was it? What did it want? How could we defeat it?
How could I cure him?
He doesn’t want to wake up.
“Let go of this world, Aerie!” I screeched, clawing at dirt, at rock sprouts, at anything that I could get my hands on, “Let go of this world and face the real one!”
Movement stopped. My heart stopped beating. For a moment, I was floating. Hands no longer deep in the soil, the skeleton no longer pulling at my body. For a moment, peace and fear had collided into something desperate. And then, the observatory flooded my vision, all white walls and bright lighting. This time, I could hear their voices. Could hear their cheers.
Aerie stared up at me, the lunar obsidian a crumbled mess on his graying forehead.
“By the divines—you’ve done it!” Axelle grabbed me by the shoulders, “You’ve done it—you’ve done it—you’ve done it!” she squealed.
The female justicars heels tapped along the floor, “Someone fetch the Director!” she called, “Quickly, now!”
Aeries eyes met mine as Axelle jumped up and down behind me, shaking me as if I didn’t understand the gravity of this moment.
I did it. I woke a Demised Dreamer.
But the elation I expected, the happiness I wanted, none of it came. All that came was a sinking feeling. A feeling that I had done something wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
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