During our next class I spent the time we were meant to be using to craft Rooms and ask the professor questions to recreate my journals in my Dreamscape. Over the course of the school year I had completed two notebooks and was half-way through my third.
They had the lessons we had been taught in classes about visualization, and lucid dreaming, to my experiments in the Dreamscape, to my thoughts on others’ abilities. I turned these two and a half journals into a giant book with many spare pages that I could fill in later.
Of course all things in the Dreamscape slowly dissolved, but that would only give me the benefit of having to revisit old ideas, cementing them in my mind further.
When I had first opened my Dreamscape just making a single paged diagram of a person had taken all my mental energy. Now I had only needed to take a single break while making the book. Once that was complete it was time to move onto my Mind Palace.
After exploring the Sun State University I had decided on what I wanted my Mind Palace to be overall. A Mind Palace’s different Rooms were suppose to work in tandem with one another to accomplish the “Dream”, and because my Dream heavily relied on knowledge and understanding I decided that my Mind Palace would use a central library as the holder of knowledge for all of my future Wits.
My Rooms would be laboratories that were connected to the library and could access information from the library as needed, and Dismantle would be the first one I made.
I was already in the process of making a test Room for Dismantle. I could do further research with Senses, but the time until we began our trip into the Second Layer was getting closer and closer. Inside the new book in my Dreamscape I created my plan for Dismantle.
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Room Experiment
Name- Dismantle 1
Goal of Room- The goal of this room is to test how Dismantle will work. The experiment Room with be catered to human anatomy specifically. By attacking the seams of a persons body I will be able to take them apart without causing unnecessary damage to the body.
Room- Sqaure, Slate.
Door- Wooden, oak, mid-tone brown. Hinged, outward opening.
Exterior Design- None
Interior Wall Design- Basic circles bordering one another in rows
Floor- Angular designs interlaced with one another
Temperature- Cool
Smell- As though sterile chemicals were poured recently.
Interior Design- A table in the middle. The edges of the room with have diagrams and books on human anatomy
Wall A- This wall will have a series of drawn diagrams of the human body, both male and female. These diagrams will move on the page.
Wall B- This wall will have 3D models of the human organs. These organs will look, feel, smell, and taste real. They will also create noises such as a heart beating.
Wall C- This wall will have books with information on human anatomy and physiology.
Wall D- This wall will have several tools used in surgical operation. Knives, saws, hammers.
Centerpiece- An operating table
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The real Dismantle was supposed to work for all different types of creatures, however for this experiment I had narrowed it down to only humans so that I didn’t over complicate the process.
My hope was that the walls B and D will be the ones that aid in the sensory aspect of Dismantle, while walls A and C help in the guiding aspect if Dismantle, helping me process the sensory information with the anatomical data I already had.
Until the end of class I continued to create the experiment Room, taking breaks to draw the layout of my Mind Palace. Before we were released to lunch however Professor Pure, who had just gotten back from his trip out of town gave us an announcement.
“During your final exam you will be split up into groups of four students each along with a squadron from the Forged Order. There is also a chance you will have a non-Dreamer student among you should they volunteer to go. You all can pick your teams whenever you find them, we just need the information at least a week before we head out. Any students that do not form a team will be slotted into any openings or formed into their own teams.”
My first thought was that we still didn’t know the date that we were going to head out so we couldn’t currently inform him a week ahead of time.
My second thought was that I had no reason to worry that I would be left alone, because I had at least one person who would want to pair with me.
My third thought was that perhaps though Elina would not want to pair up with me because I had no combat Wit yet and would therefore be useless.
My fourth thought reassured me of my second thought and my fifth thought crushed that reassurance to dust.
“Damn, hey Monty you think Melanie would join us? She seems to have a lot of friends, but we did help save her life,” Elina asked me.
Reassurance was back.
“I do not think we should use that fact to force her to join. An unwilling participant would be bad in dangerous situations,” I replied, my voice neutral.
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"I didn’t say that. I just thought that we were closer friends than most others because of that.”
“… I’m her friend?”
Again like with Elina I had been unsure about if we were actually friends. Melanie talked to a lot of people in the school, both first and second years. So it seemed impossible that all of them were her friends.
“Monty, stop being so depressing.”
I knew she was joking by the angle of her smirk and gleam in her eyes, but that still wasn’t fun to hear.
“Okay, lets use some logic here. I know how much you love logic. Do you go out of your way to sit next to me in school?”
“Yes.”
“Do I go out of my way to hang around you in school?”
“Yes. However there are also plenty of instances where we do not hang out.”
“Everyone needs their alone time. Now, does Melanie go out of her way to intentionally hang out with us?”
“Yes, but she also hangs out with many groups.”
“That’s called having a diverse social life. Do you go out of your way to hang our with her?”
I thought about that for a moment.
“No, she usually comes to us, but if she is not with us she is with others. I would not want to intrude.”
Elina gave me a look.
“You also would feel anxious that she would not want you to approach, or that the others she was with would not like you near them.”
I stared at Elina with shock. She just shrugged. I wanted to deny it, but couldn’t find the words.
“I know that you are not good at showing emotions and all that, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have them. You want friends, but you also don’t enjoy being in crowds. You also don’t like people trying to invalidate you individuality by calling you names or pointing out those traits in a negative manner. So you are only interested in making genuine connections with certain people that both don’t do those things and grab your interest as individuals.”
Her words struck a cord with me, but also made me feel… weak, vulnerable.
We walked in silence the rest of the way to the lunchroom. I felt Elina’s eyes glance towards me multiple times, but I didn’t want to continue the conversation we had been having.
It was only when we got into the lunch line that I spoke again.
“Melanie is a good choice because we know her, however we also know nothing of her Wit. As a team in a deadly environment we should at least be somewhat knowledgeable about what one another can do. For our fourth member my first instinct is to ask Cystella, I have seen some of what she is capable of, and it is unlikely for her to join a group quickly.”
“Sure, lets sit with Melanie first and ask her. She’s pretty popular so we need to scoop her up quickly. As for Cystella, well I’ve never talked to her outside the first day where she told me to go away,” Elina said grimacing.
“So no to her on our team?”
“I didn’t say that. You said she seemed pretty powerful back in The Forest of Living Dreams right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t care that she acted like a bitch, as long as she can keep us alive.”
We gout our food, pasta with a salad and bread, and headed to where we had spotted Melanie earlier. Another person was at her table, and their conversation seemed to grow heated as Elina and I approached.
“Please Melanie, we’ve barely talked all year. Even if you don’t want to talk, think about joining my team for the final exam,” Heidi pleaded.
She hadn’t sat down at the table and instead was standing a few steps away from the taller girl. Who was eating her food without even glancing at Heidi. She finished chewing on her mouthful of food, took a drink of juice, and said three words.
“No, go away,” then she went back to eating.
A look of pain flashed across Heidi’s face, and I could even see tears begin to form in her eyes before she got a hold of herself.
“Alright Mel, I’ll check up on you later. If you change your mind just let me know.”
Heidi hurriedly left, our eyes meeting for a moment before she moved around us. Elina and I exchanged a glance before sitting at Melanie’s table. Melanie for her part acted like the previous scene hadn’t even happened and gave us a cheery wave.
“Hey guys, let me guess, you’re here to ask me to join your team? Well I agree, so who’s the fourth?”
“Yes. Melanie, what the hell was that? Why’d you act like such a…” Elina said waving her hands to where Heidi had left to.
“Bitch,” I supplied.
“Thank you Monty,” Elina said sarcastically.
I thought she had forgotten the word, it happens sometimes to me, but apparently I was wrong.
“I don’t like her, but lets move on from that.”
“But she said you two were childhood friends. Also she is very kind.”
Melanie grimaced. “She was my childhood friend, and just because she is nice doesn’t mean I need to be nice back. Just- let’s just not talk about it alright? Its personal.”
I still wanted to talk about it, both Melanie and Heidi were nice, and they were both friends at one point. How did one stop being friends with someone? Well I didn’t know that, but I could look at a similar situation. Countries. How did two countries who were once allies then become enemies, or at least no longer having friendly relations.
Contested resources. Differing beliefs. Betrayal.
If I-
“Monty,” Elina said, pushing on my shoulder with a single finger.
I jumped, and pushed away my thoughts on Melanie and Heidi’s complicated friendship.
“I am listening,” I said to the two of them.
“Now you are,” Elina said, rolling her eyes. “We were talking about the fourth member, and we decided to rank them on who we want. We’ve already knocked out Heidi as well as Brax’s group.”
Three out of four of Brax’s followers opened their Dreamscape, the final one had left one weekend and never returned, not uncommon as the school years end got closer. This was something that not only grabbed my attention, but the attention of everyone in our year including the instructors.
Thankfully with their rise to being Dreamers they had not started the bullying again. Perhaps it was due to me possibly having a dangerous Wit, or when I stabbed Brax with a pen. Or perhaps they no longer found it necessary to put someone down. If it wasn’t me that had been bullied I might have asked him.
“So out of the remaining twenty students we have already taken out those five, that leaves fifteen. Ideally we would be able to get either Marollo or Cystella as our other member. Out of those two Marollo is pretty social and will likely find a group soon. Cystella on the other hand goes out of her way to talk to no one, and no one really goes out of their way to talk to her. Monty, this is where you come in. You have a decent relationship with her so you’ll ask her to join us. If that fails we will go down the list one by one until someone says yes,” Elina continued on.
I looked to where Cystella was and decided now was as good a time as any. Like always she sat alone at one of the corner tables, her back to the wall. While walking to Cystella’s table she quickly zeroed in on me, scanning me from head to toe before she seemed to visibly relax a fraction.
“Yes Monty?” she asked, setting her fork and knife down gently.
“Would you like to join my team for the final exam?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I have already gotten permission to do the final examination alone.”
We had only learned of the test today, either she had known and asked permission ahead of time, or she immediately asked Professor Pure once class had ended toady.
“I see, thank you for your time.”
Then I turned around and walked back to my table.