“On your left!” I exclaim, as Reynauld stridently ducks beyond the snapping maws of the hydra, and issues an uppercut with the warhammer that thunders across the heavens.
The monster’s head explodes on impact, rarefying to fine mist. I repel the corrosive blood away with a command from my knightly self.
“Another on your side!” I issue my assistance, cleaving another of the hydra’s jaws in two with my lance of light before it can seize Reynauld’s dream-body. The hydra roars its primal scream through the tempest. Another one of the hydra’s heads rush towards Reynauld, which he can barely deflect with the head of his weapon. Though his warhammer is stately and divine, it is proving unwieldy in close quarters.
Time to give him some more control.
“Reynauld! The weapon is bonded to your soul and will. Change its form if you must.”
There is very little hesitation from Reynauld as he conveys his thoughts to the weapon, a conveyance which I can feel in the weaves of the dream. The warhammer’s handles shorten to the length of a chair leg, and on its end, a length of burgundy fabric appears. He wraps the fabric around his hands and begins spinning the warhammer. The velocity of its rotation sends out shockwaves out and around to the tempest and the seas of our dream sphere.
The hydra’s heads, grown back now to six, cleaves space in its snapping stride towards us. Serrated teeth bared, three of its heads lunge at us –
With a release and a bang, Reynauld slams the head of his mighty hammer into the first, obliterating it – and without taking a second to waste, throws it like a boomerang to the other two, golden lightning issuing forth from its advance. It atomizes the second head and then cleaves the other head in two, and returns to Reynauld’s hand, giving us temporary reprieve from its onslaught. We regather the rain around us as we witness the hydra regrow its heads – more than the last. With a distending sound of crunches and squelches of expanding flesh, the hydra’s heads explode out forth from the cross-sections of its neck, its form serpentine across the flashes of black lightning from the overcast skies. Brief images of people – faces that Reynauld knows in his subconscious – flash across the countenance of the hydra’s heads, a man with beard and glasses, another with a moustache, and many others both men and women of various features. They leer at him and shout him names, insults, and words that would destroy anyone’s self-esteem.
Our challenge grows in difficulty, and it’s decidedly perfect. For Reynauld to believe in this dream and be convinced of the memory of his courage, the conflict he faces must be grand and worth conquering. The fire of one’s bravery shines most radiantly in the face of the impossible, and should Reynauld be able to overcome the impossible, he will have a long-lasting antidote against all manners of situations in the waking world that instill fear. From the client’s point of view, experiencing an incepted dream and emerging from it is quite analogous to coming down with the flu, and defeating it to gain immunity. The longevity of this immunity comes down to how well the Dream Merchant can craft and sell this dream, among its many factors the conflict, narrative, the environment, and its inhabitants.
Reynauld is shot across the sky and into the sea as the hydra slams him full force with its many tails. I let him feel the full force of the impact, but dive after him to ensure that he surfaces. He does, though barely – he is trying hard to keep the falling rain out of his eyes, his teeth gritted in determination, the waves engulfing the both of us in its rogue crests. The hydra, stretching the many coils of his heads and tails, extends its wings to blot out the Sun. The image that Reynauld witnesses seems nigh-undefeatable.
But is it really so?
“Knight Reynauld,” I advise him, “The all-mother of monsters cannot be defeated through ordinary means.” I haul him out of the sea, flying into the sky again so we can better assess the battlescape. “Its form is of a hydra. In order to vanquish it for good, we must destroy all of its heads at the same time.”
“How?” Reynauld asks warily, in his eyes a flurry of calculations.
“Your weapon and yourself are capable of dealing more than just primitive blows,” I assure him, ballooning his confidence. “Your powers, though having been sealed for quite a time, are still with you. You need only a memory of your past, and you shall know what to do.”
“Which memory do you speak of?”
I suspend the dream sphere and let my vision rifle through the pages of his past. The landscape changes and shifts around me as I drop myself in for a visit in the streets of a city, a school, a park, at home, at the dinner table, among his books, next to his bed, along the toy-rack where his warhammer was kept. Next to the toy-rack is a small notebook – his diary perhaps? I open it, flip them through their many dates and numbers, their actual contents having faded long ago from his recognition even in his subconscious. School assignments are always quickly forgotten. But something catches the corner of my eye – a gleaming piece of paper stuck between the folds of his bookshelf – highlighted in radiant yellow outlines. I pry it out to see its contents.
‘My Royal Retinue, Super-Secret,’ the piece of paper states in bold letters on top. Surprisingly, the letters haven’t faded – so it’s something he still knows in his subconscious. All I need is to remind him of what follows that header.
Throwing a cursory glance, I make out sketches of three different animals of various kinds – all of them chimerical and not a single animal that neatly fits into real ones – that Reynauld had come up with when he was a child. The other sketches are fuzzy.
Only these three could be of use.
"Lightning buns!
Icekiratops!
Suncrow Atenis!"
They’re childlike, but full of wonder and delight. With the imaginations that these little sketches and their names can conjure, Reynauld can triumph over this evil.
I hoist myself back out from the memory of his childhood bedroom, emerge next to Reynauld’s paused form, and unfreeze the time of our dream sphere against the hydra.
“The memory of your royal companions, which you’ve used to bring judgment to the likes of this hydra, many years ago.”
“My royal companions...” Reynauld trails off, his warhammer crackling in his hand.
“Do you, perchance, recall your companion formed of lightning and fur?” I hint, regathering my lance of light, shaping it into a more luminous form.
Recognition bursts forth from Reynauld’s gaze. His pupils constrict, his purpose made clear.
Reynauld immediately transforms the warhammer in his hand to a mighty greatsword, curved in an arc, surging with arcs of crackling yellow sparks. He takes to the heavens; I rocket towards the sky with him in tow, cleaving the gray clouds, sighting the hydra below.
Without my guidance, for he likely needs none now – Reynauld lifts his greatsword up, and from its gilded reflections bursts forth a mighty giant rabbit with the paws and tails of a cat, with thick and huggable floppy ears, just like it was in the sketch. It twitches its nose as it licks Reynauld from head to toe, snuggling up to it.
My lance extinguishes. Reynauld is beginning to take active control over this dream. I can wrest it back, but why would I? It’s going better than I expected.
“Buns!” says Reynauld, taking the fluffy gold creature for a big embrace. I witness their reunion from afar.
Reynauld whispers to it, and little by little, arcs of golden lightning begin to surge and crackle around its fur, standing on their ends. It sights the hydra below.
Reynauld, with a bit of effort, reshapes his greatsword into a lustrous icy spear, taking off its long tip and throwing it into the sky.
A giant creature resembling a rhinoceros – but with a large bony shield of ice on its head and a long tail that ends in a spiky ball – somersaults into existence and lands atop the clouds, making their anvil ends puff out. It stretches and yawns, shaking its head.
“Kira!” Reynauld says, flying over to hug it, but Kira extends one thick leg and holds him away, making a minuscule ‘hmpf’. It’s clearly not happy that it’s been abandoned for too long!
But a few seconds of cajoling here and there, and Kira leans its ears – where are its ears? – into Reynauld’s speech, sighting the hydra below. It rears up on its hind legs and back down again, ready to fall like a meteor to slam the hydra full-force, waiting for Reynauld’s command.
But not all is done, because Reynauld takes to the blazing Sun overhead, disappearing for a few moments, and arrives on the neck of a colossal crow wreathed in fire, possessing three legs. The atmosphere sizzles with its arrival; just its wings dwarf both the creature named ‘Buns’ and ‘Kira’!
His royal retinue is all assembled. Buns and Kira both angle themselves down at the direction of the hydra. Buns towards the hydra’s heads, Kira at the hydra’s torso. Reynauld himself, on what must be his Suncrow Atenis, gathers his reins.
He sounds the charge.
Buns and Kira both cleave the clouds into space as they rocket like meteors towards the maws of the hydra below.
The hydra makes a deafening roar as it threatens to swallow Buns and Kira just a few hundred yards away.
“BUNS, LIGHTNING SCAR!”
And instantly, air and space sunders in two with a rift of golden lightning, expanding so fast into thunder that for a second, I – the conjurer of this dream – cannot hear. The rift of the golden lightning bisects the heads of the hydra in two, and before it can regenerate, Reynauld issues another spell.
“KIRA, MEGA FREEZE!”
The suspended raindrops around the hydra gather explosively across its torso and the severed cross-section of its necks – and in an instant, solidifies into massive blocks of ice with jutting crystals, luminescent in their glow. The hydra flails the exposed length of its necks, trying to smash the ice on its tips so the heads can re-emerge, but Reynauld has another spell loaded and ready, issuing his command as he and his Suncrow Atenis descend like a brilliant comet from the sky.
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“KIRA, BUNS, KEEP IT IN PLACE!”
Immediately, the ocean at the hydra’s knees gather into a thunderous whirlpool of monstrosity, gathering all caught in its path like leaves in a waterfall. The whirlpool hews the rocky outcrop from where we began, crumbles it to dust in its serrated frosty blades, and immobilizes the hydra in place with arcs of lightning thundering into the sky. The rushing vortex, towing the air above into a tornado of rain and frost, gathers the necks of the hydra into a tight bundle.
“EAT IT WHOLE, SUNCROW ATENIS!” Reynauld commands without wasting a beat, his voice overwhelming every single raindrop in the air, whereupon the Suncrow Atenis opens its beak – no a jaw – no a gigantic maw – and immolates itself in blistering flame. It parts the clouds with Reynauld on its neck and displaces ten thousand tons of air, rushing past us, dwarfing the hydra in size, and devours the necks and remaining heads of the hydra in a singular, titanic chomp, the rain vaporizing and sizzling away by the force of the blast. Kira and Buns both dodge out of the way.
But the hydra isn’t done yet, because it lengthens its tail and slaps Reynauld hard in a last ditch effort, cleaving his armor in two and throwing him off Suncrow Atenis – and yet, Reynauld has all he needs to take it on. I make space between the hydra and myself, as Reynauld commands his royal retinue to take to the skies.
“BUNS, KIRA, ATENIS – SHOW THEM YOUR POWERS COMBINED!”
The three crater the ocean as they take to the heavens and into the void, and not mere 5 seconds later, a brilliant flash of light rends the upper skies.
The hydra flails about, trying desperately to regrow its heads. It almost succeeds in restoring a portion of one neck, then another, and another, but –
I look up and my eyes grow wide.
The descending meteor of blistering blue flames is probably going to engulf me too, and I definitely have no intention to be caught in the blast, let alone try to alter it for it could ruin Reynauld’s narrative in this dream. I immediately call the winds to carry me far, far away, as far as I can while also witnessing the impact of the divine that will atomize everything in miles – and turn my head.
I hear Reynauld’s last chant in my consciousness.
“LET THE HEAVENS FALL.”
All world becomes white as snow as the meteor slams into the struggling remainders of the hydra – the world seems to pause on its own accord. And as my eyes adjust, a fireball of blue and violet shocks forth into existence, devouring the sky, sea, and the seafloor in its path. It utterly atomizes the hydra, rendering it to dust, while the fireball rarefies the air in its explosive punch outwards, painting a streak of shockwaves across the clouds and the sky that I can see. I cover my ears in great satisfaction as the thunders of the upper deep arrive where I float, rending its shock through my bones.
Holy MAHANIR, Reynauld. You had it in you all along! All you needed me to do was show you the way by restoring your memories! Talk about an easy inception! Or was it because I had taken Eisen?
A crater sizzles into being where the hydra once was. I regather the winds to bring me there.
Reynauld lands like a shooting star in the middle of the crater, a fist driving into the earth where no sea now lies, with Buns, Kira, and Suncrow Atenis landing behind him. Buns scratches its ears with its hind legs as Kira narrows its eyes to glance at Suncrow Atenis, who is blowing surreptitiously on its head to melt the snow and licking it like ice-cream.
Reynauld glances up at my figure, a smile on his lips and courage on his brow, his armor radiant and gleaming, the memories of his courage restored at last thanks to his childhood companions.
“Glad to have you back, Sir Reynauld.”
* * *
Both Reynauld and I jolt awake in the Garden where everything began. He rolls out of the hammock and plants his feet firmly on the ground, looking at his hands, his head and face drenched in hot sweat. He glances around, coming to his senses, his mouth opened wide in a mixture of astonishment and wondrous marvel. He breathes deeply several times, checking his self, his arms, the suit which he wears.
I check my pocket watch. 47 minutes to the clock, since the dive. I get up and proceed towards him.
Reynauld straightens himself up and flexes his arms, looking to the gardened ceiling, closing his eyes to savor the scent of the air. He opens them again, an aura of absolute resolve sizzling from his gaze. He sees me approaching and dauntlessly takes my hand. There is a warm strength to his grip, and as his heartbeat reaches mine, they drum and assure me before mine has a chance to assess it.
He leans close, his brow lowered, his features sharp.
“Thank you, Maestro Amelie – you’ve unlocked the memories of my greatest companions. Kira, Buns, Atenis. I sought to remember them, to dream of them, but could never remember them ever since the desert of this world took it away. They’d accompanied me on adventures and journeys. They’d given me courage when I was little, and I had given them too. What awesome joy to see them again, knowing they have always been by my side! You’ve given me everything I need, and more.”
His words no longer have a stutter to them. They flow in rhythm like the words of a statesman, a General, a President. The timbre of his voice is deep, mellifluous, and resonant like the Knight which I made him out in my dream.
I break into an involuntary smile, tightening my hand around his. “The pleasure is mine, Mr. Reynauld. Should you need me again, I’ll be here.”
“Thank you,” Reynauld replies, briefly kissing my hand, striding away in swift rhythm to gather his overcoat from the wooden hanger by the subterranean gates. He puts them on with a flourish, taps his shoes once, checks his pocket watch, and climbs the stairs.
I follow after him for the more mundane conclusion to this session – payment.
“What amount shall suffice for you, Maestro Amelie?” Reynauld asks, his eyes set on his carriage and entourage of guards waiting outside.
I quickly calculate the sum in my head. One hundred per hour for an inception service, rush order, so times two, giving two hundred. Add the cost of Kaha-melding with a first-time client, plus the cost of Eisen, which is additional hundred-and-fifty plus two hundred, which gives us... five-fifty.
“Five-hundred and fifty Denaros, Mr. Reynauld,” I declare, expecting a guard of his to enter and pay me, since he appears not to have that sum of coins on his self.
“Nonsense!” chuckles Reynauld, tapping his chest. “A figure too poor. Do take this instead,” Reynauld says, opening his coat jacket and confidently taking out a single, glimmering gold coin so giant and pure that my eyes pause at the sight.
A thousand-Denaro coin. The last time I saw a thousand-Denaro coin was nearly seven years ago. Only a handful has ever been minted by the Reserve Bank of the Republics, people say.
Reynauld sets the coin down for me on the counter.
Jules leans in to inspect its inscriptions. From its minute etchings and folds, both of us spy the prized engraving of 99.999% marking that distinguishes it as the purest form of gold everywhere. From just its weight in my fingers, there’s no doubt it’s the genuine thing.
“Are you sure, Mr. Reynauld? This is almost double the bill.” I look up to confirm.
“My luck charm and prized coin from since I was a child. You have given me something more valuable than luck: a dream of myself as I always was, and of the royal retinue I’d made. It is only fair for you to be its next cherisher.”
“If you insist...”
“Now then, I have a negotiation to win. I bid you adieu, Maestro Amelie.”
“May your dream carry you true,” I whisper to his leaving.
He makes a gentleman’s bow, and valiantly marches past the door, strides past the snow, his overcoat billowing behind him. One motion from his hands, and his retinue of guards in the waking world board his carriage along with him: to a new future, they depart.
* * *
“8,665... 8,666... 8,667... “ Jules counts over the hum of the ceiling fan. It’s the morning already – but I haven’t been able to get an ounce of sleep. The Eisen I took the night before has disturbed my own dreams.
“Aw, damn...” he murmurs under his breath, clattering the coins in an effort to recount.
“Wha’s the matter?” I ask, clutching my throbbing head, shimmying myself up to the counter table.
“We’re still short. Short of seventeen-hundred...”
“What?!” I exclaim, getting up so fast that I bang my knee on the table. I make a loud yelp, my head swimming with both pain from my knee and nausea from the Eisen. “There’s –” I stutter, massaging my knee that’s sprouting with fresh purple, “Mr. Hovstad’s sum from 3 days ago. Did you count it?”
“3 days ago? He came in yesterday night...”
“Yesterday night? You sure?” I ask, my memories tangled with both the real and imagined.
“Sure as grass is green and kindness is good! Don’t you remember?”
Oh yeah, Mr. Hovstad. Then Reynauld. That’s the reason I took Eisen – that’s the reason why I’m in this state right now.
“...I – okay, it’s coming back to me, damn the MAHA I ever take Eisen again...”
“I keep telling you not to take rushed jobs!” Jules admonishes.
“Hey! He was desperate. I could’ve taken him on and I did. Complaining doesn’t pay the bills.”
“We are still short though.”
“By how much?” I inquire, stumbling my way to the counter of coins.
“About seventeen hundred.”
“Why in the – why?”
“The New Year? The interest’s doubled,” Jules sighs, clutching his head and palming his face, peeking a glance at my languid figure with bedridden hair. My usual bun’s been loosened into hair that comes down halfway to my back, and my bangs are all over the place. I look like the image of a witch in children’s tales of old. Actually, maybe not an old hag – perhaps a ghostly maiden, more like.
I bang the table. “So all that effort yesterday wasn’t worth a fish’s tail?”
“Still worth something. Still closer,” he reassures for fear I am going to tear something out. “But we’re not going to be able to foot the bill by tomorrow. We’re going to need at least 10 clients coming in today, but it’s...” he pauses, looking up at me, “you are...”
Jules was right. I was in no condition to push myself as hard as I did yesterday. An earsplitting headache throbs between my temples – I can feel each heartbeat in my head, and all I see is a blur. I couldn’t even remember the events of yesterday a moment ago. My hands are cold and clammy in the wintry chill, twitching in the aftermath of the Eisen I utilized the night prior; it’s like a hangover, but much worse. Everything bad about consuming Eisen kicks in slowly and more intensely, making itself known as punishment to those that abuse its otherworldly quality.
I draw some water out of the air by instinct and freeze it, putting it between my head, collapsing to the sofa.
“What’s the exact amount we’re missing?”
“Seventeen-hundred and thirty-two.”
That required seventeen hours of work at the bare minimum. Fewer hours if the clients wanted a more difficult service, but that was no guarantee.
“Did you pay the guards already?” I ask, my voice coming out in raspy breaths.
“Yeah...”
“How about yourself?”
“I didn’t yet...”
Damn it. Jules hadn’t even taken the money for his own share and we’re still short.
“What do we do?” Jules asks. “You can’t push yourself any further...” he murmurs, voice trailing off.
I clutch my head. Maybe it was time to take the plunge. The after-effects of Eisen were almost debilitating to occasional users like me, but the more regularly one consumed it, those negative effects would ameliorate to the point one would become immune. The tradeoff was that addiction would be practically inevitable. And any withdrawal would result in nothing short of carnage. Stay away from it, my parents had made me promise long ago. I didn’t want to abuse this power. But having used it out of desperation a few times, I know what strength it can afford me.
At the same time, I knew what not being able to pay dues to the Bloods meant for us. The last time, a year-and-a-half ago, we came short of three hundred Denaros when the Bloods paid us a visit. They broke everything and ransacked the place, and tore up and burned all the plants in our garden below. That was our first strike. They left us physically unharmed, but that was for a good reason: for them, we are sheep, and our wool can be harvested. Injured sheep don’t make good wool. Nevertheless, they threatened us that the second strike would see our entire shop being repossessed. I knew I shouldn’t have taken their loan three years ago to get started as a Dream Merchant. Every day was like pouring water into a pot with a broken bottom, hoping for it to fill.
Perhaps now was the time for me to take the plunge into Eisen for real. I would become addicted, sure, but that meant I would gradually come to feel none of its bad effects as my body and nerves adjusted. It would make me a better Dream Merchant, perhaps the most demanded Dream Merchant out of every single republic that existed. Then I would be filthy rich. And when I’m rich, I won’t have to worry about how to get my supply of Eisen.
I shakily stand up to stride to the basement.
Jules must’ve seen my thought in my eyes, because he immediately bolts up and stops me in my tracks, arms outstretched. “No, just no. I know what you’re thinking, but if you do, there’ll be absolutely no way out.”
“...better than becoming homeless, no?”
“We won’t become homeless. We’ll – we’ll sell everything we don’t need at the moment, we’ll sell that remaining Eisen bar!”
“We can’t sell those without the permission of those filthy Bloods.”
“MAHA damn, you are right...”
It was between a rock and a hard place. Then a thought strikes my head. “Marnie’s. Marnie’s. We go to Marnie’s.”
“And play poque?” He asks.
“Precisely,” I say, nearly losing my balance from my swimming head.
“You are not in a state to merchant any dreams and you want to play poque?” He asks, incredulous.
“Poque requires a different skill. I don’t need to use my head. But I need you.”
“We need to place bets. What’re we going to be betting with?” he asks, arms folded.
“Our eight-thousand... whatever it is,” I recount.
“And if we lose it all?”
“The same result. The shop becomes repossessed. EXCEPT!” I holler, banging into the wall mid-stride, trying to get my coat on, “With poque, we have a chance to pay off this month’s dues. Whereas without it, I would say we don’t have that chance. A chance is better than no chance, right?” I inquire, as my vision turns to black and I feel myself falling to the floor.
Jules catches me with a soft chant of air before my head slams on the wood.