The guards lead us through the bustling second floor of Marnie’s shack, down to the first, and to a private dining chamber recessed away on the east side, with an open air railing facing the sea. The sea breeze ruffles our hair as we enter, and so does it for what appeared to be a woman in a navy shawl, seated a quarter clock away from us and facing the waves outside.
To my surprise, there is no dining table here.
Two more guards of moderate statures stand next to the woman and move aside as the door opens.
“Ma’am, the person you have asked us to bring.”
“Thank you,” says the unnamed woman, gathering her shawl and smoothing out her dress, standing up and turning to face me and Jules. Jules stands some way behind me, taking off his hat and taking it to his chest.
She uncovers her shawl and places it with care, seeming to float around her neck in the wind spray of the sea.
She has a hair of natural gray tinted blue that comes down in waves, ending around her shoulder in thin wisps. It’s styled elegantly with a small bun at the rear, with a gold hairpin sticking through it. Sapphire earrings, shaped in trapezoid gold frames, grace her ears. She is dressed in an elegant navy muslin dress.
Her brilliant eyes of cyan, wrinkled around the edges in what must have been exhaustion, pierce my own dark violet. Subtle wrinkles carve across her face, a feature which adds rather than subtracts from her beauty; in her youth, she must have turned nearly every head on the street.
Her voice is elegant and refined, coming through with a spry clarion.
“Bravely you descend, through the heavens of dusk,” she whispers.
A new client? Here? I’ve never had someone request me outside the shop – because none knew me...
My mind clamors with a mixture of complete loss and a roiling feeling in my gut of something new.
“...And gravely I ascend, through the mortal rain.”
“Yet with clipped wings, my son cannot soar,” she intones.
“So weather he must, through the vines of earth,” I answer back.
“But wish for it not, the giver of wings.”
“To whom would you beseech for wings of your son?”
“To the white owl of Serien, who can banish the night,” she answers, an expectant gleam in her eyes.
Both of us stand still as the waves ruffle our hair – her gray-blue around her shoulder, and my bangs fluttering in the wind with the bun intact.
I was really not in the mood to take on a new client. Not five minutes ago I had lost everything I owned. Neither did I have the ability to merchant any dreams right now.
But it doesn’t harm to listen to a request, so I gesture down.
“I understand Maestro Sophia led you to me?”
“She has,” she answers quietly, relief settling over her face. Her tense eyes relax. “A pleasure to meet you, Maestro Amelie Marceau,” says the woman offering her hand. It’s cold to the touch, but strong in its grip. “I am Minerva Cartier.”
“The pleasure is mine,” I say, most of my thought still on my disastrous and shameful loss at the poque two floors above.
“Please, do sit,” she says, where her guards immediately bring a chair for me. Jules remains standing behind me, hands gathered.
I gather my coat and take a cautious seat. The guards bring forth a small round tea-table with an elegant trim and glass cover.
“Some tea?” She asks.
“If you... I would be delighted,” I say, as she pours a deep tea the color of persimmon onto a porcelain cup in front of me. She pours her own, setting the spout towards her.
“Regarding the matter of a dream I have been seeking,” she continues, laying down her cup after taking a slow sip, “no other Dream Merchant has been able to create.”
“I understand the matter pertains to your son?”
She nods, slowly. “Yes. My son, René Cartier.” She pauses, looking towards the great inland sea just beyond the railings on her left, as if it had answers.
She closes her eyes for a moment, then turns to me again with her voice solemn and low, minute trills evidence of breaking. “Ever since he was little, he has been sick.”
“What kind of sickness?”
“Of a long, pernicious kind,” she sighs. “One which wastes the body. It’s been years since he’s had any strength to walk.”
“Oh...” I trail off, my hand over my heart.
She closes her eyes.
“I’ve tried many doctors in vain. But all say that my son’s sickness has no known cause: rather, they believe it is an affliction of the mind, caused by a belief that he cannot envision a world where he is healthy and happy.”
“What may have caused this belief?”
“Grief,” she answers, eyes laden with memories of time. Minute etchings of the scars of time come across the forefront, catching the thin rays of the afternoon sun coming through the spring sky. “He was very close to his father. But he passed away a few years ago. Not shortly after, the sickness set in.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“I had brought in many doctors, each prescribing many cures. But very little has had any effect except sunshine and ample air, which seems to slow the progression somewhat. I looked for the possibility of other cures, but none now remain in the field of medicine. And lately, his condition has taken a turn for the worse. That is why I came to you.”
“I see. If it’s an affliction of the mind, then a dream could be a cure?”
“Precisely, Maestro Amelie.”
“And what dream do you have in mind?”
“The dream of Immortality.”
Immortality – that’s a first.
Minerva continues. “It’s been long since René had any hope. He can no longer remember when he used to be able to run across the fields of grass, nor splash in the summer sea. He does not remember the fragrance of fresh bread, nor the taste of strawberries. It’s been long since the world held any color to him. I can see it in his eyes that he awaits only for the end to his suffering, to drift off to sleep. He responds only to my own calls for him.”
“I see...”
“Buffeted by his body, he sees himself as someone who is destined to die. But I want him to think otherwise. I want him to see himself as someone who has a strength to push through – someone who believes that he is full of life, that he can live forever if he willed it so. I want him to believe in himself.”
“In which case, it is not immortality per se, but confidence?” I reiterate, puzzled by the semantics of her request.
“No, sadly,” she answers back, glimmers of labor and fading hope in her eyes. “Other Dream Merchants have tried to incept in him confidence and failed. Confidence only skims the surface. If you are able, I want you to incept a dream that will fundamentally change the way he thinks of himself.”
How exactly, I want to ask. I had taken on requests from clients far and wide before. Dreams of courage, love, freedom from nightmares. Even a dream that they loved mathematics, for a certain student at an academy. A dream to remove their fear of heights, or their fear of small spaces. A dream that they were rich and wealthy in their past life, so they were going to try their best to recreate that in this life of theirs. But all of those dreams shared two common factors: that what I incepted in them could manifest in this waking world if they attempted hard enough, and whichever negative aspect of their personalities they wanted to erase I could erase, because things like the fear of heights or fear of small spaces, or fear that nobody liked them were all in their head. But not a concept like Immortality, the concept of being able to live forever. Such a thing was logically impossible to accomplish in the waking world, no matter how hard one tried. Immortality was a myth, in which case, any Dream of such a myth would also fail. I do not think Minerva has thought her request through. And I must say, the wealthy are quick to make these kinds of requests, thinking that Dream Merchants can bring any myth to reality with the help of capital.
How do I let her down on this...
“I must admit a Dream of Immortality is a very tall order,” I reply, being careful not to refuse her on the spot.
“How much would it take?” she asks immediately.
“Pardon?”
“How much would you ask for your services?” she inquires, her brilliant eyes a mix of acute intensity and melancholic wandering.
“Well, it’s not really a matter of how much –”
“If you would excuse my rudeness, would it be sufficient to cover for your recovery in the poque game upstairs?”
I pause to gather my thoughts, and speak my mind.
“Frankly speaking, I would need more clarification on what the dream of Immortality entails. Your exact goals and criteria, in addition to what your son wants. Exactly how he is ailing and what his everyday condition is like, and how malleable he is to believe in dreams. I understand he is quite young?”
“He turns nine this month.”
“Right. The younger the child, the more likely they are to believe in the strength of the magical, the conjured. But this immortality...”
I ponder.
“Dreams are only as effective as the intention behind their creation. It requires an equal part in the dreamer’s desire to believe in that dream, to manifest it into reality. Things like courage, catharsis, or romantic interest, I can merchant to my clients without too much trouble, because those things are not contradicted by the physical state the client is in. Even a cowardly man can be taught to be courageous, to be encouraged, if a few dreams makes him believe that he has overcome insurmountable odds before.”
“But a person always awakes, no? If the dream is fantastical, they will not believe that they’ve actually done those things,” Minerva replies, cognizant.
“That’s what logic would have you believe,” I reply, “but it’s not that the client must believe in that they have done these things in reality. It is to restore in them the feeling, the memory, the emotions necessary to make them cherish it again and know how sweet it tastes. Confidence and courage, love and desire. Many people lose these things as they are buffeted by cold realities. But provided they can remember how great it felt to actually be one, this inspires in them the strength to carry forward.”
“Then why is a dream of immortality difficult to achieve?”
“Because the dream of immortality applied in your son’s case will mean that, every time he wakes up from his dream and is confronted with the reality, it will be even more crushing by contrast. His body will fight against the very notion that he is strong. When I inspire in a person courage, their body and physical form does not counteract this notion of courage they have in themselves, because courage comes from within. Fake it till you make it, people sometimes say, and in many cases the state of the mind rules supreme over one’s success. But people are also products of their environment. Concepts like immortality and health are intimately connected to the state of bodies and how well the client feels. This is why I think that incepting a dream of immortality to your son will be a very difficult undertaking.”
She cups her hands as if to pause her speech. Her eyes shimmer with glimmers of tears. “I know, I know, I always suspected that, yet no dream merchant so far took the initiative to delineate their reasons for rejection...”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
She looks down at the floor, dejected. Though my head is still in the money I’ve lost and the consequences of tomorrow, I can’t help but feel a tinge of regret at addressing her too plainly just moments before. Or just making her out to be one of those fastidious clients.
“Regardless, Maestro Amelie... I still want for you to try your hand at this dream of immortality. You are my son’s only chance.”
“It’s a difficult call, ma’am...”
“If it isn’t too much trouble for you, could I ask you to do something for me?”
“...What do you have in mind?”
“I know this dream is very challenging to achieve, let alone incept successfully... Maestro Sophia before you spoke plainly that she did not have the ability to do so, and so did all other Dream Merchants, though without explaining kindly like you did. I needn’t ask you any further on such a dream depending on the results of my next request.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“An inception?” I wonder, my mind darting to how much I can get out of it.
“No, a retrieval,” she answers back. “No Dream Merchant has been able to retrieve the name of the little stuffed animal my son used to play with as a toddler. Unfortunately, he lost it a long time ago on a picnic, and no replacement has been able to make up for it. Perhaps if he is reminded of the name, he could be a little happier... restore in him those joyous times...”
“I see, a retrieval request...” I ponder. “I surmise I must meet your son then?”
“No, actually... I recollect that he did tell me the name before, a long, long time ago, during bedtime and everywhere, but all the years of grief from my husband’s death and René’s illness, I’ve forgotten it from conscious recollection. But deep down there, I am confident it exists.”
“So you would like me to meld with you? To retrieve the name of the stuffed animal through a shared dream?”
“Yes.”
“When would you like this...” I trail off, cognizant of the fact that I won’t have a shop tomorrow.
“Now. If you can.”
“Now?”
“And here.”
“Here, at Ms. Marnie’s shack?”
“Would that be too much trouble?”
“No, no, it’s just –” I pause, hearing the waves crashing on the craggy rocks below the platform, “the environment leaves some calm to be desired.”
“I do feel calmer among the waves, Maestro Amelie.”
I am close to objecting, because this also requires my focus and comfort, but my mind is seized with a protest not to lose this client.
“As you wish,” I say. “Oh, ma’am, another thing, I must say this wouldn’t be without the necessary charge –” the word ‘charge’ leaving a dirty taste on my tongue.
“No, no, please do not mistake me for a miser,” she assures, her hand over her heart. “In fact, I was just about to inquire more about the poque game which you were in.”
“The poque game, yes...” I murmur.
Wait, now I realize she’s mentioned it once before. How did she know about that? Was she waiting the whole time I was upstairs so I could finish doing what I was doing?
“Do you need to recover from the game?”
“I..., yes, I frankly do.”
“If you would excuse me for intruding on your loss, may I ask how much?” she inquires, motioning her hands to her guards to wait outside.
I wait until they exit.
I say. “Ten-thousand and one-hundred.”
“Would it put you at ease if I helped ease the sum in its entirety? So we could proceed with our retrieval uninterrupted?”
“The entire – the entire sum...?” I was about to holler YES OF COURSE, HOLY MAHA, WHY WOULDN’T I, THANK THE DIVINE, but I had dignity I wanted to maintain. “That would be too exorbitant an amount, although I do need it for urgent purposes...”
“I would not put it past the Bloods if that is what you require the sum for, Maestro Amelie,” she speaks with a gleam in her eye. She knows. She’s probably been on the other end before.
“Would you take this service for ten-thousand and hundred?” she reiterates, leaning in, expectant. “Should you be successful in your retrieval, I will provide that amount immediately after. Should you not be, I will still provide you half of that amount as my gratitude. Does this sound amenable to you?”
I think.
“Yes.”
* * *
“Jules, could you wait outside?”
“Of course,” he says, cognizant of the motions. He feels a little relieved too. If I succeed here, then we would be able to save the shop from seizure by the Bloods.
“Please do not disturb us,” Minerva affirms to the guards. They make a nod and shuffle outside, gently closing the door behind them.
The open-air chamber is occupied by just the two of us now.
“Before we begin, Ms. Minerva –”
“Please, no need for too high a formality. Just Minerva is fine.”
“Before we begin, Minerva... I understand you’ve melded your Kaha with many Dream Merchants before?”
“Yes. Numerous times. So it will not take long for you to meld.”
“I see. Please make yourself comfortable,” I reply, hoisting my chair closer.
Minerva closes her eyes, and I do mine.
Her hand brushes mine. Our fingers entwine.
A gentle velvet black drapes my vision. There is nothing but emptiness stretching for miles and miles, utter black. The sounds of the waves below the open-air chamber and the salty fragrance of the sea fade away into the world of the liminal.
As I wait, holding Minerva’s cold fingers in mine, the pulse of our hearts become known to each other. Hers is a slow, rhythmic beat that sounds as if she’s weeping. An immediate melancholy suffuses me. My warmth and heartbeat begins to flow into hers, making a melody of a hymn.
As I wait, I begin to hear the crackling of earth and metal in the distance. I see a droplet of silver metal in my vision, glimmering and trembling, gathering into the shape of a bird, growing wings and pinions, materializing into a form of a mourning dove. Unlike Reynauld’s own Kaha – the shape of his soul – Minerva’s does not hesitate as it flies the distance towards me and lands in my outstretched palm. Minerva’s Maht, her Element at her coming of age – is Earth. It coos softly in my ear.
I hold her closer to listen, and the threads of her mournful singing unravel immediately to form constellations in the sky. As I suspend the human insistence of grammar and logic, immersing myself in the song that Minerva’s soul confides in me, the lyrics begin to take on their own form, stretching from notes of a hymn into golden lines that grow taut. The threads expand and structure themselves into a hazy, yellow sky, the ground at my feet begins to materialize into the surface of smoothed sandstone tiles, and threads fall from the constellations to give structure to where I stand. Numerous lines fall and creak and crumble into shape with the sounds of bricks being laid on top of one another, falling like blocks, except it’s gigantic blocks of sandstone – falling below me as it establishes a great tiered city that grows larger as it descends in altitude, making where I stand the topmost tier. The city proper stretches miles below where I stand. The architecture finishes arranging itself in the style of a classical temple, flanked by statues of unknown figures – probably people Minerva knows – and concludes with a wilting garden and a fountain without flowing water where I walk.
A harsh, yellow Sun pierces through the haze and hits the back of my neck on the summit of this city. Unlike the case with Reynauld, Minerva is not with me in this dream.
As I glance away and peer some way down to the city below, I notice that it is burning with scattered fires, ash ascending in long columns of smoke. I look further out into the distance to see a wasteland stretching as far as the eye can see, its ash-ridden plains punctuated only by the occasional corpses of umber trees. Low-rising mountains of equally featureless measure shoulder the landscape. There is nothing to be retrieved there.
I turn my gaze back towards the tier on which I stand. Smooth sandstone tiles lay at my feet, forming what must be a triangle-shaped garden that tapers the further it moves away from the center of the city. It is flanked by a colonnade of numerous pillars, reaching from the pointy-tip of the triangle all the way to its base. In the distance, some hundred yards away at the base of this triangular garden, I spy a large wrought-iron gate, most likely leading to the interior of the city and the mountain on which it is drilled into.
A Memory Archive, is what Dream Merchants called it. It usually was in the form of towns, villages, or cities, where you could enter individual houses or buildings to witness a certain memory unfold. This was Minerva’s Memory Archive, one that was more vertical than horizontal. Its suffocating landscape and post-apocalyptic vision told me everything I needed to know about her state of mind. She has been suffering for a long time, and in Memory Archives such as these, powerful negative emotions were likely to lurk in the form of eldritch horrors.
I speak the words to let the vision of my dream-self materialize, my hair once again flowing out the back, my bangs drifting in the wind like a classical priestess-turned-warrior. I command a spear to take form in my hand, but to my surprise, only a broken wooden shaft materializes instead.
Uh-oh.
I did not have full control over this Dream. This meant I could not change its aspects or bend it according to my will alone – there is an essence of reluctance, resistance, to it changing shape at the behest of others. This was common for people with a Maht of Earth, but as I continue to conjure a spear and other viable weapons to see them sputter or turn to dust, a pang of concern skewers my heart. No one in Serien could wrest control of dreams better than I did, perhaps ever. To see my power stemmed like this meant that Minerva’s memory and will – and her melancholy – is inconceivably strong.
But there is another way around this.
Dreams resisted weapons because they were objects that persisted in the dream for a long time. However, temporary objects – such as fireballs, ice, or even gusts of air, could manifest briefly. I could use this to defend myself against any horror or monster that came at me from the interior of the city on my way to retrieve her memory of the stuffed animal her son once loved.
I briefly let a spark and flame arise from my palm. Their radiant heat strikes my face. I shoot shardlings of ice – they knock off the stone from the pillars. I drive forth a fistful of air – its scatters the leaves of bushes and trees and ripples the water on the still fountain.
I could more than defend myself.
I stride gingerly towards and past the wrought-iron temple gates, entering the heart of the city.
* * *
The air is infused with the acrid scent of mold and petrified air. A great, empty hall of fallen statues without faces enter my vision. Distant echoes and garbled noises of crackling stone race up the walls.
Beyond them, I scout great staircases with each step nearly twenty yards wide, descending in spirals forever and below to the depths of this city-mountain. There was no other way I could go – the destination – or the name that had to be retrieved – lay there in the dark.
I gingerly step forward onto the first step.
It crumbles.
I attempt to leap to the other step, but it crumbles as well. I race down and down and down, as the walls become alive with a multitude of colors. I spot the projected image of a baby’s face, laughing in the summer sun, as her mother and father cradles her by a picnic table, their swims by the beach, and the splashing of colors. Minerva’s earliest memories – when she herself was a child.
I run breathlessly down the crumbling steps as the stone disintegrates right behind me, always and following, taking me through the archive of Minerva’s youngest memories. It is such a rush that I cannot fathom all that I am seeing.
But a full three minutes of this, and I find myself at a tier below, another layer.
And before I can take my breath, I hear a screech from above.
A gigantic crow with fuligin feathers and crimson eyes dives into where I stood, cratering the stone. I managed to duck just out of the way, but the crow snaps its beak at me, the air vibrating on its own accord. It fires off its razor-like pinions of utter black, scraping off my armor, beginning to turn transparent by the force of Minerva’s dream.
Just as I expected, I thought.
I fire numerous shards of ice shardlings at its crimson eyes, which nicks its glossy surface and makes it scream. It claws at me, which I mostly dodge, but the tip of its fourth claw nicks me in my priestess’s dress, carving a bloodied string across my chest.
I feel blood issue forth. A stinging pain skewers my body.
An injury. Normally, I can heal this in an instant, but as the state of bodies are also persistent objects in a dream, if a dream resists, I cannot recover.
I cannot tarry.
If I am injured here, I will be forced out of the dream. If I am killed here, then my consciousness may be forced into a catatonic state – a coma.
I spy an open patch of feathers below its wing, and hurl a lustrous lance when it opens its wings.
The demon-crow breaks it into two by twisting its legs sideways, arriving, and hurls it back at me, which I dodge. The lance smashes into the carved engravings of the dimly-lit interior, hewing off rocks.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
Recalling the memories of battles arts which I gleaned from a previous client of mine, I launch myself at the crow-demon, somersaulting out of the way of its snapping beaks.
Temporary force.
I duck from underneath and hew the rock with the rocket of my advance, and temporarily pool all my imagination into the tip of my fist.
1,000%, divided over 0.1 seconds of impact.
My fist meets the crow demon true, and the force is of such quality that I blast the sinews off the demon, cleaving its wings.
It screams and wails, its good wing trying to cover the stump, but I hurl myself up to its giant head, and spear its brain by stabbing it with a rapidly vanishing lance.
The demon clatters to the ground and vanishes in miasmic smoke.
That was one down. If this was the case, I was sure I am going to have to fight a demon at each level of the memory.
The stuff I do for Denaros, I wonder, as I leap down to the next spiraled staircase sending me further down, the stone steps crumbling behind me.
Images of sunshine. Memories of rain. The wedding between Minerva and her husband. René’s birth from tip to end. I descend and descend, witnessing the various memories that have been guarded behind each demon. And at each level, a new demon appears: a centipede, a badger, a lion.
Though I try, my arms and legs are cut and nicked and bruised without my armor which this dream resists. I become more tired, covered in grime and dust, my hair splattered with the blood of every negative emotion that chains Minerva’s memories.
And yet, I make it to the bottommost layer of the city – or at least what appears to be the bottommost layer, because there is no more staircase that leads down. Instead, a giant, circular rim, a foundation floor engraved with many letters that I do not recognize, greet me.
I land upon it, almost cratering the floor.
There is a giant gate just ahead.
I creak it open and stride forward, eager to retrieve whatever was hidden behind these deepest recesses of memories.
And suddenly, all the great chamber and hall turns utter black.
A deep, rumbling voice resounds throughout my consciousness which I am unable to stop.
“GO BACK, FAIR TRAVELER.”
“Who halts me thus?” I holler, pointing towards the tenebris clouds taking shape.
“If you seek what I protect, you will cause Minerva to suffer. Is that your wish?” It speaks in undulating tones.
“Why would she?”
“Because there are some memories which are best left untouched.”
“And you are her unconscious?” I inquire, still turning this way and that to find the source of the noise.
The black clouds begin to gather into numerous scales, and thread into a long, unified body without wings, resembling a serpent – no, a dragon with iconography from another Empire, far from where I live. Its head takes shape into the visage of a wolf’s, a tiger’s, and a deer’s, with combination of all of their features, dwarfing my size. It can easily swallow me whole.
It pushes it giant nose and snout into mine, its horns stretching back, its green mane waving though there’s no breeze.
“Take me as whatever you may, but if you wish to retrieve the name of the little stuffed Celendir I protect, you must pass my riddle.”
A Celendir. A great animal with jaws strong enough to bisect trees and a lumbering body with surprising speed – a snout and head of a wolf, ears somewhat resembling a rabbit’s, with a body like a giant bear and rhinoceros combined, and a fluffy tail leaning more towards flat than cylindrical. It was the national animal of the republics in which I lived. It was very popular as a stuffed animal for little children, owing to their fluffy, and somewhat adorable features when sized down.
“A riddle, you say?”
The dragon nods once, unblinking, staring directly into my soul.
I reply. “Very well. A riddle I shall take.”
The dragon rears away, speaking directly into my mind, taking to the subterranean sky in a coil. It enunciates the riddle.
“I am the thing that speaks in the night. I kill, I inflict grief. I make those afflicted with it unable to sleep. None who have had me survive, for the date of death awaits them all. I cause their hearts to beat without thinking, to commit errors in their ways that escapes all reason. Every person shall experience this, and no mortal can escape my claws. Yet everyone treasures and waits for the day I ensnare them, and cherish the moment I strike their hearts. What. Am. I?”
I deliberate. Something which everyone has, and one which appears as a curse. Yet, everyone wants it – almost as if they do not know what it brings. What does everyone have? Mortality. No one wants mortality. What else? Life. Does everyone want it? Some say life is a curse. Not everyone wants it. What else? Time. It brings death to all, and everyone wishes they had more. But that does not explain why people cherish the moment it strikes their hearts. Then it must be a double edged sword, one which brings equal joy and equal death and that was –
“Love.”
The dragon descends in a coil, clouds of black and white gathering around it. It then uncoils, revealing the lone figure of the little stuffed Celendir toy.
The little stuffed animal, patchworked and threadbare in many places, hops its way to me. It chirps, stretching its little legs and paws.
“Where’s René?”
“You can get to him, but first I need to know your name.”
“My name? Has René forgotten? Oh no...” the little Celendir mewls, its ears drooping. “It’s been years, so I guess I understand... I’m Ferris. Will you bring me to him?”
“I cannot promise that I will do. But he will come find you. For sure.”
The dragon makes an undulating sigh.
“You do not know what you do,” it admonishes. “Reckless descender to the morass of memory. But you possess a strength and wit like no one else,” it remarks. It drifts to me and places a two claws on my chest, crinkling my bloodied priestess garbs. It’s not enough to hurt me – instead, a sensation of warmth flows into me. Not the scorching heat like the apocalypse outside, but a gentle warmth like the afternoon Sun.
“Very well. Return to the surface, descender to this place, the answerer of my riddle. Let your heart be true, and let your second descent on your own accord accompany a greater truth. Seek to save Minerva.”
It dissolves into a thousand flecks of paper as I am shot upwards from the great, darkened circular halls, with the little Ferris in my arms.
Keep my memory.
As my consciousness dissolves within the dream, I inhale deeply.
Cold evening air stings my nostrils. As I open my eyes, hazy and wet, I see the Sun has tucked itself beyond the horizon of the sea.
We’ve been here for hours.
Minerva awakes from her slumber as I gently shake her awake. Her glazed eyes catch the light of the lamp beside us. She looks to me, mouth parted.
Ferris, I tell her.
A second. Then she cups her mouth. The next thing I see, tears begin to descend on her cheek.