I have the dream again.
It’s a little different every time. Sometimes, it’s just a void, others, there’s a glittering ice-blue eye in the fog, or I’m on a mountain top in a blizzard as the wind whips around me—but it’s always white, it’s always cold, and there’s always that voice.
In the dream, the voice will rumble around me, echoing through the white, and it’s always felt more than heard. I can never remember exactly what it says, which is odd. I’ve had vivid dreams all my life—I have dreams from childhood that I remember as well as some actually lived memories—but I can never remember the voice’s words.
I always remember the impression it leaves behind, though. The voice wants something from me, and it’s losing patience with how long it’s taking to get it—but is trying hard to conceal that fact.
And I always wake up exhausted, in a cold sweat, with a pounding headache.
After downing the rest of my bedside water, I try to doze for a little while longer, but my brain won’t turn off, so I ready myself for the day and head downstairs.
When I enter the sitting room where we usually take an informal breakfast, Flynt takes one look at me from over his book and winces. “Again?”
I just nod and pour myself my morning cup of tea from the delicate, highly decorated pot on the sideboard, then take a piece of cold toast.
“Where are the others?” I mumble around a mouthful as I settle on the end of the settee closest to his armchair. I tuck my feet up underneath me and rest my teacup and saucer on the polished wood end table nestled in the diagonal between us.
“Meg got in late, so she’s still asleep. Tyrus supposedly went out to the morning market, though I’m pretty sure he’s actually catching up with some of his Kartesian Family contacts.”
“Of course.”
“And Jonas is downstairs trying to practice with that hand crossbow Meg found for him.”
I wince. “Oof. How’s that going?”
“I only stuck my head in briefly, but from his tone, I’d say even worse than usual. Which…” Flynt shakes his head and sighs. “It’s the simplest option out there. Even my father can use one effectively enough. If he can’t get it?”
“Yeah.” I close my eyes. Everything feels a little unsteady, like I just got off a roller coaster. I really, really hate that dream. “I’ve been thinking about what Meg said, last night. Do you really think we are doing alright?”
“You and me?”
“No. No, I mean the party. The greater we.”
“Ah.” He pauses long enough that I open my eyes. His brow is furrowed as he considers the question. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” I say again. “That’s about where I am.”
“On the one hand, we’re incredibly cohesive as a party. Our skills were complimentary from the start, but it feels very organic now. Meg and Tyrus have their melee dance, and I often feel like I just inherently know where they are. We can all trust you to lay down effective coverage, and Jonas has all our backs. Just look at that sewer goblin nest.”
“That had no business going as well as it did.”
“And yet…” He spreads out his hands as if presenting his case.
“On the other hand, though.”
“Right.” Flynt’s expression tightens. “On the other hand.” He clears his throat and lowers his voice, leaning in closer to me. “Meg is out all hours of the night and won’t talk to anyone about it. Jonas is frustrated and seems to have a new doubt every day. Tyrus is always desperate for the next mission. You’re barely sleeping...”
“And you?”
“I’m busy worrying about everyone else.” He chuckles, though it’s clearly unfelt.
“Maybe getting out of Oosal will help.”
“Maybe. I think we would also benefit from having a purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something we’re working toward, together, rather than just our own individual reasons for doing this.” He draws a slow, deep breath. “I obviously had some difficulties, at the time, with our whole journey across the Sound. But at the end of the day, and in hindsight, it had a lot of benefits, and I think there was something to it that we’ve been missing since.”
“We had a goal beyond stop the monster of the week.”
“Exactly. I keep coming back to it. Meg and Tyrus have, too. We’ve been talking, putting it into perspective. Meg calls it processing.”
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“We weren’t sure how you’d react. You haven’t brought it up since we got back.”
“That’s because we lost, and the whole thing nearly tore us apart. Or have your forgotten how angry you were at me?”
He cringes. “I apologized for that. I’ll apologize again, if it’ll help.”
“No, Flynt, it’s fine, I just…” I shake my head. “I don’t want you to feel like you ever need to keep me out of a conversation.”
He shrugs. “Maybe that’s a lesson for all of us, then: not to assume we understand what everyone else is thinking or how they’ll respond to things.”
I frown at that. “That feels very pointed.”
“Sorry, it wasn’t meant to be. It was just… maybe more a reminder to myself.” He offers half a smile. “But. That is part of why I suggested Ruska last night. The last un-checked site from that map you found is up in the Northedge Peaks. Maybe we can find it.”
“And the three of you actually think we should try?”
“Maybe not right away, but we think that there’s no harm in giving ourselves the option,” he says, very carefully. “I’d like to prepare a little more, first—get a couple extra spells in my reserve, and certainly in Jonas’s. And I’d like to learn a little more about the Stone and who is after it. Things seem to go better when we have more information.”
“That’s hard to argue.” I sigh again and sip my tea. “Speaking of. That Terravin coin I found on that ogre. It’s been weeks, Flynt. Last you said, you had some theories. Any luck there?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing that makes much sense, and I haven’t figured out how to explain the discrepancies.”
“Maybe we can talk them through?”
“I don’t want to give credence to conspiracy theories. All that can do is derail us.”
“Flynt, I am certain that there’s a connection between that coin, the Terravins, and the necromancer. There has to be. Even if it doesn’t make sense on the surface.”
I know, thanks to my up-close-and-personal encounter with her, that the necromancer we unknowingly chased across the Sound is elven. I also know, thanks to the [Journal] function from the [System], that the necromancer’s name is Amani Terravin, which links her very explicitly to one of the powerful Four Families.
I don’t, however, know how to share the full extent of that information with the rest of the party and have it be taken seriously. The only real option is to tell them about the [System], which I can’t really explain without also telling them my origin story. I’m not opposed to it, necessarily, but I don’t know what comes out of that. Will they even believe me? I mean, I certainly wouldn’t believe me if the situations reversed—and when I tried to explain the [System] my first day here, Flynt was so dismissive of the idea that I haven’t tried again. What would be the point?
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But now, of course, they know me: they’ve followed some of my unexplained hunches, and they certainly know that I don’t exactly fit in. So, what if I tell them, and they do believe me? Would they hate me for keeping some pretty big secrets from them? Would they understand why I did? Would it even be a surprise?
Or, could something seriously bad come out of it? What happens if characters in a videogame world learn that about themselves? Could it break the world?
If that’s even what this is—and I’m still pretty on the fence about the realities of the situation. Coma dream feels less and less likely every day, but I’m still not really prepared to accept that I’ve been sucked into the simulation, or that I’ve been hurled through some kind of rift in the multiverse.
I take another sip of my tea and finish the last bite of my toast.
“I don’t disagree with you,” Flynt says. “That’s why I’ve been digging in as much as I can. But I’ve told you how complicated it is given the, ah, family connection. I’m not sure how Da—or Nyssa, for that matter—would react to me looking into some of these things. It implies a pretty big accusation.”
“What if it’s not an implication or an accusation? What if it’s a simple fact that she is a Terravin, she is a necromancer, and she is searching for the Stone of Ylaura?”
“Then the consequences could be massive, Keira, and far bigger than us. If she’s a member of the House and is actively searching for an artifact like the Stone, then that potentially breaks any number of accords between the Families. To say nothing of the way she’s going about it. Necromantic magic is not forbidden as a concept, but there are certainly laws against raising undead armies.”
“Uh, yeah. I would hope so.”
“Connecting that to one of the Families would put a lot of things at risk—it could even destabilize the country.”
I shake my head. Qeth politics are awful. Nearly everything about how the country functions is built on the Four Families that came to power after the death of the last dragon, and none of them seem to trust the other three. This is clearly evidenced by the complicated number of accords and power-sharing structures in place to make sure everything is as balanced as possible between them and the different peoples they represent. How it’s held up for five hundred years is just inconceivable.
“See, to me, that feels like all the more reason to get it out in the open and try to stop her. Better to do it before they have the Stone, right? If holding the powerful accountable is going to lead to social instability then, I hate to break it to you, Flynt, but the society isn’t actually stable.”
He sighs. “I’m sure you’re right. But on a personal level, I’m not sure I’m ready to be at the heart of those consequences. I don’t feel equipped.”
“No. I get that. I just…” I brush hair away from my face and tuck it behind my long elven ears. “Keep looking, will you? I think we’ll feel even worse if things go to absolute shit and we could have seen it coming.” I hesitate. “You still think it’s a bad idea to tell Nyssa?”
He lets out a breath. “I don’t know.” He rakes a hand back through his hair. “I’ll be honest—I don’t love the fact that she not only has the Terravin name but that she’s also looking for this thing. Da’s always said that she’s as cut off from the family as he is, and by her own choice, but I can’t help but…” He winces. “It’s difficult. I’ve known her my entire life and she’s always been good to me. I also think she’s been good to us, overall. But she certainly hasn’t been transparent. She undoubtedly knows more than we do about everything, and a part of me can’t help but wonder if Jonas is right to be so distrusting of it all. What if…”
“What if her separation from the family wasn’t her choice?”
“Exactly. And what if she sees the Stone as her way back in?”
I nod. “Certainly an angle to consider.”
“And that’s certainly a number of interesting revelations,” Meg says from the doorway.
I nearly jump off the settee from surprise and knock my hand against my teacup, spilling its remains.
Flynt curses in surprise as well, falling back in his chair as he looks to her with wide, on-the-edge-of-panic eyes. “How do you move so quietly?”
Meg shrugs as she enters. “I’m used to having to compensate for the armor. Without it, I’m a ghost.” She shows her teeth in what isn’t quite a smile as she crosses to the sideboard and begins to prepare her coffee. “You two also have a tendency to zoom in on each other when you’re talking.”
He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“Doesn’t matter. Back to what you were saying?”
“How much did you hear?”
“Starting somewhere around your family connections.” She turns and leans back against the sideboard as she stirs some sugar into her cup. “It’s nothing I didn’t already figure out, Flynt, don’t get too worked up—I'm not.”
I frown. “What do you mean you already figured?”
She shrugs. “I’m good at asking questions without people realizing I’m asking them, and even better at piecing together the answers.” She taps at her temple. “Not just a sword arm.”
Flynt scoffs. “You’re also, apparently, an accomplished eavesdropper.”
Their relationship has changed a lot since we first started out, and I’m having a hard time reading his reaction—I can’t tell if he’s relieved, unnerved, angry, surprised, impressed, or something else entirely.
“That too.” She actually does grin at that and settles down in the other armchair on the opposite end of the long tea table from Flynt. Meg’s hair is loose, which is unusual, and it falls in long, thick, shiny black sheets over her shoulders and past her waist. She looks tired, but relaxed, and even, maybe, a little amused by the situation. “I don’t think Nyssa is trying to get back in the Terravin family’s good graces, but I also think we’re right to question her motives and her honesty.”
Flynt glances at me, then back to Meg. “What do you think she’s lying about?”
“Maybe not lying. Obfuscating? Omitting? It’s been bothering me for a while, and I’m clearly not alone. There’s a lot that she doesn’t tell us, even when we should know it. She apparently has several teams operating, but we’ve never met them. The organization supposedly has significant resources and a big, protect-the-realm mission statement, but we’re sent out on seemingly arbitrary and disconnected assignments with only the most basic of information, a lot of it wrong, and not so much as a provided healing elixir.”
She shifts in her chair and takes a sip of her coffee. “We’re told to be patient, to trust the system, that she has a plan, but what has that amounted to? As Keira pointed out, all of these missions lately? They may not be entry-level, and they’re paying out fine, but they’re not especially challenging. We’d have been able to handle them all even before we stole away across the Sound. Maybe not as cleanly or as effectively, but it would have been entirely doable. There’s no challenge. There’s no push to improve. Our purses are full, but they’re making no real investment in us, just giving us big promises with no clear timetable, and she gets cagey whenever anyone raises that point.”
Flynt nods, his jaw set askance, visibly considering this. “I don’t disagree with any of that, Meg, I’m just not clear what it adds up to.”
I think I have an idea, though. “You think she’s intentionally holding us back.”
Meg taps the top of her nose, then points at me.
“Okay…” Flynt lets his voice trail off. “Why, though? What would be the point of bringing us into the organization only to do that?” He looks between us. “There must be some motivation.”
“Right, and that’s where I get stuck. For a while I thought maybe it was a favor to your father. He doesn’t want to alienate you by visibly standing in your way, but he doesn’t want you running head-first into a giant’s den either. Enter Cousin Nyssa to keep an eye on you and feed you the safe missions.”
Flynt’s forehead furrows. I know that's crossed his mind before and he doesn't like those thoughts being echoed back at him. “But you don’t think that anymore?”
“No. It could still be part of it, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. If it were, she’d keep closer tabs and try to control our quest board missions even more than she does. She also wouldn’t go silent for long stretches, and she certainly wouldn’t randomly disappear without saying anything.”
I stand to refill my tea. “Randomly disappear?”
“Yes, well. I had a little more to drink than I intended to last night and got the brilliant idea that I might take the opportunity to have a frank discussion with our benefactor about our future.” She holds up her hands. “Which, I know, was the wrong call—I realize that I don’t speak for the group, but I had let some thoughts settle, and was annoyed, and not thinking clearly. But it didn’t matter anyway, because Nyssa, apparently, left for Gerai on personal business shortly after she sent us out looking for that troll, and she isn’t expected back for more than a week. Anthene found it very odd that she hadn’t told us.”
“Yeah. I find it very odd that she hasn’t told us,” I reply.
“So do I,” Flynt murmurs, standing and crossing to his desk, where he flips open the large, leather-bound simultaneous journal we use to communicate with our so-called handler. “She hasn’t replied to this morning’s book communication, yet, either.”
“On the one hand, it’s not that unusual not to hear from her for a couple days after an assignment,” Meg acknowledges. “On the other, though—doesn’t that feel like part of the problem?”
Flynt and I exchange looks, and I nod slowly. “Alright. Maybe we can work with this. I mean, if she’s disappearing on us, she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on if we make our own decisions.”
He frowns at me. “What are you proposing, Keira?”
“Layrus always wants to do you a favor. Maybe you could go down to the adventurer’s desk and see if she knows of any escort opportunities—to Ruska, like we talked about, or if, you know, maybe there just happens to be another interesting option and we end up in Gerai, and, oh look, there’s Nyssa doing whatever she’s doing.”
“Gerai’s a big city,” Meg says, “it would be a pretty big gamble.”
“Sure. But what else do we have going on?” I raise an eyebrow. “Worst case scenario, we break up the monotony. Best case scenario, we get new information that we can use. So, while you do that, Flynt, I am going to go down to the Wide Sky and see what I can find out in the sober light of day. They all like me better, anyway.”
“Right. And what’s my assignment, Captain?” Meg asks wryly.
“You stay here, wait for Tyrus to come back, drink your weight in water, and definitely take a bath—sorry, but you smell like a walking hangover.”
She frowns and hesitates a moment before sniffing at herself. “Yup. Thank you for your honesty.”
“Any time. All that sound good?” I look between them, and Flynt just chuckles, shaking his head. “What?”
“I'm just appreciating take-charge Keira,” he says, grinning. “It’s… been a while.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t get too used to it. I’m due to get knocked unconscious again any day now.”