Promises and Schemes

“Now that I think about it, I haven’t really been in your Dream Realm yet, Eli,” Frein said as he traversed Ashtine’s Dream Realm. It was a forest of gigantic trees, enough for him to easily lose his way. Fortunately, like it had been in Kristel’s Dream, a figment of illuminated meiyal told him where to go.

Choosing to cure Ashtine’s Void Sleep via her Dream Realm had been an easy decision to make, even if it risked any potential complications due to her half-faunel nature.

He and Elizzel were stronger now. Far stronger. A mere Nightmare influence that would put someone of Ashtine’s level into this cursed state shouldn’t pose any problems for them now. Frein didn’t like admitting it, but the General Sky Knight’s strength couldn’t really impose any challenge to him, which corresponded to the nature of the Nightmares they would be facing along the way.

The only real issue had been touching Ashtine’s meiyal core, which was located on her right inner thigh, with the marks wrapping around her leg like a garter belt.

Touching such a soft, intimate spot was one thing, but keeping his hand on it while he slept in reality—and while Katherine was there watching—was another. He could feel the Lady’s glaring, dagger eyes from the Physical Realm piercing the Dream Realm. But of course, that was just his imagination.

Regardless, so far, it was easy going, and the boring walk made Frein’s thoughts linger on things such as Elizzel’s own Dream Realm.

“We don’t have them,” Elizzel replied through the Tether. “Well, technically I have one, since I’m Tethered to you. But usually, we simply connect to The Great Dream.”

“Oh, the one Nora mentioned? With The Great Gathering?”

“Yep.”

“So, you can technically pull me towards there, right? Through the Tether?”

“Well…” Elizzel considered for a while. She ended up manifesting and sitting on his shoulders again like she had done before. “I think Nora would be the best person for that. I don’t exactly remember the Dreamways that much.”

“Are those, the paths to get there?” Frein asked.

“Yeah. But the Ways aren’t exactly just paths. If you simply want to exist in The Great Dream, I can help you have a glimpse, but to actually traverse, you need to follow any of the Ways that the Dream recognizes.”

“Example?” Frein almost stopped in his tracks. He had never heard of any of these things before. Records, academic books, even people like Jaylene or Katherine hadn’t hinted about something like this.

“Hmm…” Elizzel thought for a long while, and as always, Frein never once felt the urge to pull from the Tether. He only ever did it for trivial things, or fun things, but never for important secrets. “You’re really not going to try reading me?”

Frein shook his head, rubbing his face against the faunel’s thighs.

“That tickles!” she giggled, holding his head in place. “Why not, though?”

“I don’t want to intrude,” he explained. “I know it’s weird since we’re Tethered, but if I was in your shoes right now, I wouldn’t exactly want someone else looking at what’s left of my remaining memories.”

“Oh…” Elizzel slowly descended from his back, causing Frein to stop walking.

“What’s wrong?”

“I know you’re kind and considerate, but I didn’t think you were that much of a thoughtful person.” Elizzel looked him in the eye, her gaze intense as it could be. “I made a promise to Kat, you know? That I would never snatch a kiss from you without her knowing.”

“That’s the same promise you gave me with regards to Kat, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I sort of wanted to break it just now.”

Frein smirked. “You know we can’t do that.”

“I know, but I didn’t promise anything about hugging you.”

“Sure.” He opened his arms, allowing the faunel to wrap her arms and legs around him. Her weightlessness made it easy to carry her.

“Thanks for thinking about my well-being, Frein.”

“Anytime.” He moved on, following the ever-present flowing meiyal. Of course, his hands moved conveniently underneath the faunel’s bum.

“You’re a real maniac, though, aren’t you?” Elizzel asked, but her face was nowhere near disdain or disgust. She was enjoying it.

“I didn’t promise anything about my hands.”

“You’re threading the line with that one.” With a smile, the faunel pecked his cheek. A quick one, unable to control herself. “I didn’t promise anything about not kissing your cheeks, either.”

“Alright, that’s enough.” Frein threw the faunel on his back. She immediately recovered her balance and returned to her usual seat, piggybacking on his shoulders. His nape felt particularly warm, somewhat moist. He ignored it. “We’re only doing it when Katherine’s involved. That’s the actual promise.”

“You only say that when it’s convenient,” Elizzel said, pressing her thighs against his face.

Frein regained control with his hands. “That, and… it wouldn’t really sit well with me if we went any further than just a little flirting. Just spend your time imagining what you’ll do to Kat, then we’ll do it to her together.”

Elizzel placed her hands on his head again, playing with his hair. “Yeah. I agree. Katherine trusts us just as much. I’ll think of something, but I don’t think I’m anywhere as sick as you guys.”

“That aside,” Frein pointed out, returning the conversation to their initial topic. “Is this your roundabout way of saying you can’t tell me about the Dreamways?”

“It’s not like that. I don’t think it’s the appropriate time, and I’d much rather share it with Katherine too.”

“Oh, fair.”

“Takes so much time to explain.”

“Practical.”

“Yep.”

“What about explaining this thing about half-faunels?”

He could hear the faunel scratching her head. The level of discomfort she was trying to ignore was channeled straight through the Tether. Frein endured it rather than insisting or withdrawing his question.

“Sorry,” Elizzel said after realizing what happened. “Faunel’s reproduction is the same as everyone else’s; the only difference is that we can’t reproduce with each other. A faunel has to have a Concept, you see, like Freedom and Consequences, for me. Only Brymeia can create more faunels. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reproduce with the other creatures that we turn into. It’s just a matter of who we choose to be our partners, and that doesn’t happen as often as you might think.

“Plus, our Tether makes our situation a little more complicated than usual. I also want to explain this to Katherine, but simply put, if you’re worried about it, the two of us can’t conceive because you and I are Tethered. There’s no way you can get yourself pregnant no matter how many times you play with yourself.”

“That’s a weird stretch of logic.” Frein couldn’t get such a twisted thought out of his head. The faunel picked up on it.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“It’s exactly like that, Frein, you disgusting pervert.”

“Sorry.”

Elizzel sighed. “It’s a Tether thing, for sure.” She held Frein’s face. “Now that I think about it, it’s important that we talk about this now while it’s just the two of us.

“If you and Katherine ever seriously decide to have a child, you need to decide whether you should sever your Tether with me before you do so.”

“Why’s that?” Frein had an inkling where the conversation was leading to, but the thought was simply too alien for his mind to comprehend without Elizzel saying it properly.

“Because of the Tether, Frein,” she said simply. “If you two are to conceive, I will be a part of it as long as we’re one. Your child will be a half-faunel and will have three biological parents.”

Frein was silent for a while. He walked a good distance within the forest, carrying the faunel over his shoulders. Elizzel was patient, returning the favor by not pulling from the Tether. Finally, he decided to ask a question.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Eli, but if our Tether ends up being severed one way or another, would we be able to rebind it?”

“No,” she said without missing a beat. “It’s the same reason why you can’t Tether with another faunel even after severing our bond. I didn’t tell you this because there was no time for you to hesitate, but the main reasons are the Concepts that I’ve imparted to your existence.

“Even if I end up leaving, those Concepts—Freedom and Consequence—will remain with you. They’re already too heavy for a mortal to carry on their own, so if you ever try to add more, you’ll just simply die. It’s a separate subject altogether if you managed to become a Worldborn or a Deitar or a god, but that makes having a child even more complicated. Even I don’t know much about it.”

“That makes it easy for me, then.” Frein smiled, refusing to show it to the Faunel of Freedom and Consequences. “Kat and I will have a kid. That, I can assure you, Eli. So you better learn from the parents we’ll meet along the way because I’ll be leaving that child to you two.”

Joy overwhelmed their Tether, but Elizzel pulled on his cheeks. “You’re not just a pervert, you’re irresponsible, too!”

“Ow!” Frein fought back by pinching the faunel’s thigh.

“Ow!”

“I’m here doing my best to make sure there’s a future for this world, not only for my kid, but for their kids and everyone’s kids for generations to come! And I’m the irresponsible one?”

“Thank you, Frein,” Elizzel said, ignoring his sarcastic question. “This matters a lot to me, you know. I know, I don’t say this often enough, but I love you and Katherine just as much as I loved Kristella.”

“We love you, too, Eli.”

With that sudden segue, Frein was forced to let his question pass. He decided on a different topic instead. “So, do you have any idea who Ashtine’s mother is?”

Frein had asked about the General Sky Knight’s background before they had entered her Dream Realm, and Kristel had been quick to provide. She vouched that Judiciary Knight Verdim Solfey was not a faunel. So it could only be Fena Solfey, his deceased wife.

The Princess couldn’t recall much about her, which made the conclusion lead obviously towards one way. Frein thought it was too simple.

“I don’t remember a Fenazzel, or any other faunel disguising as someone named Fena,” Elizzel said. “Maybe if I know what she looked like… I can discern something from it. Besides, after the Divine Severing, most of us faunels don’t really go out of our way to interact with each other.”

“That would have to wait, then.”

The meiyal trail they were following had eventually led them outside the forest maze, into a wide desert clearing different enough to consider it an entirely different region. Snow-capped mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks curving as if the skies pushed down on them, unwilling to let them pass. The mountain formation gave Frein an impression of claws, as if they belonged to some creature the size of a country.

But what really grabbed his attention were the Nightmares.

“Just look at that,” Frein exhaled, mesmerized by the chaos he was seeing.

“This is… too much.”

Nightmares of all sorts appeared and disappeared, in and out of the Dream, as if they were unable to maintain their existence. It reminded him vaguely of Schrodie’s Realm.

“You think it might be because she’s a half-faunel?” Frein asked. “I mean, with regards to why she hasn’t turned yet despite this… whatever this is. There’s so many, and they’re blinking in and out. It hurts just looking at them.”

Just as suddenly, a lesser Nightmare appeared beside him. Frein crushed its head without even thinking about it.

Elizzel pulled from their Tether, Displaying their Exhibit for an instant, and created a spark from the Fulgurblade of the Thousand-Year Storm. It wasn’t even a Meiyal Art. Just pure lightning meiyal. But the headless, disfigured abomination promptly combusted from the sheer nature of its power.

“I have no idea, honestly,” she replied as they both observed the enemy’s blazing death throes. “Like I said, faunels don’t develop a Dream Realm or a Mind Palace of their own. But that’s one good assumption.”

The lesser Nightmare evaporated, reduced to mere meiyal residue. It left its core, but it vanished from the Dream as soon as Frein reached for it. Not even a trace leading anywhere, just a pop, then it was gone.

“Weird,” Elizzel said.

Frein waited a while, making sure it wasn’t just phasing out momentarily. After a minute, he decided the core was completely gone.

“Guess we won’t be gathering much,” he said.

“So much for an easy power up.”

“Easy?” Frein asked sarcastically. “We undergo some stupid, uncontrollable shenanigans every time I eat a Nightmare core. There should be some way we can tame it. I might be a lecherous pervert, but I’m no exhibitionist.”

Elizzel didn’t bother stifling a smirk. “Whatever you say.”

Frein just sighed. “In any case, we should probably get ready for a big fight.”

The Visitor assessed his meiyal reserves. Even with Schrodie’s limitations removed—now named as Schrodie’s Help—the amount of decimeiyal they had been able to Mill barely one percentage of his current supply. It was astoundingly difficult even with Elizzel’s constant help. A quarter of it was eight-meiyal, and the rest was six.

Frein no longer had any of the normal two-meiyal. Without any limitations to his Milling anymore but his own progression, Elizzel’s sources of meiyal—currently four—added effortlessly to his constant two. In a sense, producing six-meiyal was just as simple as it had been for him with two-meiyal before. The difficulty of jumping straight to ten, or decimeiyal in other words, however, was akin to stirring thick mud with paper.

Fortunately, the very meiyal sources they owned were useful in their own right. Specifically, just now, when Elizzel had burned the lesser Nightmare with un-Milled meiyal from the Fulgurblade. With basic understanding of Meiyal Weaving, assisted by their ever-improving mastery of meiyal, they could now hurl sparks of electricity without effort. The intensity would be far weaker compared to a fully formed Art, but it would still be strong enough to spark any living tissue incapable of resisting meiyal aflame.

“Anything stronger than a lesser Nightmare would be able to hold it off,” Elizzel said, playing with sparks around her fingers.

“But at least, they won’t be a problem,” Frein continued. “And it won’t cost us any Milled meiyal at all.” He still needed to incapacitate them to render them unable to resist, but this improvement alone gave him a lot of confidence.

“As long as we don’t abuse it,” the faunel reminded him. “Just as there’s Art fatigue for practitioners, there’s also a limit to how much raw meiyal a meiyal-charged material can produce at any given time.”

“Let’s open up with a strong one, then,” the Visitor said, Displaying his Exhibit. “The more attention we get, the less effort we have to give chasing them around.”

Elizzel didn’t argue. They were always of the same mind when it came down to decision-making. Seldom did she question his choices, always seeming to agree. The same could be said for him, though.

Frein invested a generous amount of eight-meiyal in his Blood Moon Fulgurblade as he calculated the best trajectory for the highest amount of damage to all the Nightmares on the horizon. The mere manifestation of his Exhibit and the culmination of power within the Fulgurblade were enough to stir the phasing abominations into focus, turning their unreasonable wrath towards him.

They gathered like moths to a flame.

Frein took his stance, holding the Fulgurblade on his side. In a single breath, he drew it from the Shinemoon Scabbard as he invoked the Meiyal Art into the Dream.

“Song of Aya: Meteoric Lightning!”

Darkness flashed in an instant the moment the black lightning struck. Thunder clapped a moment after. Then hundreds upon thousands of lesser Nightmares disintegrated to meiyal residue.

Frein released his blood-lightning sword and the scabbard quickly caught it before reappearing behind his back. At the same moment, he jumped as the ground beneath him cracked and collapsed. Above him, Nightmarified Could-Nesting Rocs, yumas, and vorks lunged at him.

He held onto his scabbard, only to realize he was surrounded from all directions. But instead of regretting his decision to attract them all, the Visitor only smiled.

----------------------------------------

The Entity was confused.

Now that it had some semblance of freedom because of that stupid, little Princess, it quickly took the chance to explore, only to find a half-faunel suddenly primed for the taking.

Cautious, it tried to peer through Destiny, but Brymeia—curse her and her annoying schemes—had most of its divinity contained within herself. Not only was it unable to invoke its Prime Designation, it couldn’t trust what Destiny was showing it at all.

Still, whatever tricks or plans Brymeia had come up with to keep it shackled, it was far too curious to not try its luck on this… Ashtine Solfey.

Much to its dismay, however, the Nightmare tolerance of this half-faunel was akin to a Void Mother. It didn’t have much interest as to the how of it, but rather, the how and why there were so many Nightmares within this person’s Dream were the more interesting questions it wanted answered.

A brief scan of her memories brought the Entity to two weak conclusions. First, Ashtine’s Mind Palace was abnormally modified; some of her memories weren’t her own. Second, this General Sky Knight hadn’t been to the Nightmare Lands at all to be this infected.

While both discoveries were odd, neither of them explained the amount of Nightmare influence Ashtine had, much less how she was able to resist it. Well, her half-faunel nature greatly helped, but without practical training, she should’ve easily succumbed.

This only made the Entity realize that its entry within Ashtine’s Dream Realm caused a tensed thread to completely snap, unintentionally causing a cascade of complications to her body. Before it could do anything about it, the General Sky Knight had fallen into Void Sleep.

The Entity couldn’t take advantage of the moment, however, since a disturbing presence had entered Ashtine’s Dream Realm soon after. It didn’t need to observe up close, for it identified the presence almost instantly.

“Just what exactly are you scheming, Zerax’thum? Why are you involving yourself over this petty squabble? This is utterly beneath you and your Contradictions. And yet, you went so far as to die for her.”

The Entity clicked its nonexistent tongue before scurrying away. It would rather not let the Visitor know it was here.