Chapter 301 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream IV

Claire watched carefully as her avatar moved across the glowing square, executing a series of attacks that only a vector mage could manifest. At a glance, it almost looked effortless, but she knew from first-hand experience that it was far more difficult than it seemed. The sudden changes in her momentum strained her joints and warped her flesh. She didn’t feel it in small bursts, but continued abuse made her tendons scream. It was a pain only experienced in her humanoid form. She never felt the backlash as a slightly longer-than-average qilin.

As if synced with her thoughts, the illustration suddenly assumed her true form. It fluttered around the magical box, mauling its foe with the sword between its jaws. It was a method of combat that she had yet to explore. And yet, it somehow seemed familiar. Just by looking, she felt like she could pull it all off.

“Those are just basic maneuvers,” said the ghost beside her. “We can move on to more complex techniques once you’ve mastered them.”

Her eyes still on the screen, she replied to the claim with a silent nod. She could finally hear the man’s voice, but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to reply out loud. There was something about the mysterious dream realm that stayed her hand, a fragile balance that she felt like her words would inevitably break.

The phantom seemed to understand this as well. He didn’t encourage her to speak, nor did he even give the opportunity. He would always begin rambling soon after she formulated her thoughts. The timing was consistent and precise; it was clear that he was listening in. Mind reading was an ability that he had never demonstrated before, but while it caught her off guard at first, she soon dismissed it as another needless consideration. It was just another part of the give-and-take that pervaded the rest of the realm.

His distorted world did not strictly grow clearer as her body was changed. There were some parts of it where the clarity was undeniable. The magical boxes—screens, according to the phantom—were displayed in much higher fidelity. The individual splotches that formed the displays shrank; the images went from resembling works of embroidery to images made of coloured sand. Likewise, the details right next to her body were clearer. She could practically feel the silken blanket laid over the man’s body, just as she could touch the strange, uniform fibres that bound the clothes scattered around the room. But everything outside her reach was foggier. The walls were blurry and some of the further set pieces looked more like amorphous blobs than the things she recalled from her previous dreams. Some of the objects wouldn’t even appear until her head approached them, suddenly popping into existence only when her snout drew near.

The realm’s lord was the only thing that was clear from afar, but even then, there were hiccups. Sometimes, his spirit was more visible than others. It faded in and out, his transparency ebbing like the tide on a cold winter’s night. Sometimes, he would even flicker, going out in the wind to return a moment later, unfazed and unbothered, despite his lack of continued existence.

That same silencing wind was another source of curiosity. It was almost like they were outside; she always felt the draft coming from one direction or other. Again, it was proximity that drove their function. The only walls that blocked the night were those in front of her snout.

“That reminds me.” The ghost interrupted her thoughts as the room began to shift. “You should spend more time in your true form. You’ll heal faster that way.”

Claire craned her neck and inspected the wounds in question. The frayed lines in her magic circuits were clearer in the dream realm. She could see them running down her length, with all four of her limbs just as plagued as her tail. Though, she couldn’t see them all in detail at once. She had to snake her head around the tiny room, looking at each part of her body the same way she had to find every other object that faded in and out.

In retrospect, becoming a room-sized qiligon had not been the best idea. Her bed chamber was already too small for her to stretch to her longest length, and his was maybe a quarter of the size. She wouldn’t have been able to fit, had her body lacked its serpentine malleability.

“You shouldn’t have too much trouble fighting in it for now. Your scales have grown much tougher, and dragons tend to excel in close combat. You’ll be impossible to injure if you manage to grow an osteoderm, but that kind of feature is too costly with your bones made of the stuff they are. Oh, and if you’re wondering, an osteoderm is skin that’s made of bone matter, like an armadillo’s. It’s a bit of a rare trait, but it’d be pretty useful with bones made of true ice.”

Perhaps because she was already asleep, Claire found it impossible to escape the lecture by way of nap. She could do nothing but sit around and listen as his words were etched directly into her brain.

Perhaps realising her boredom, the ghost gave her a bit of an annoyed look and breathed a heavy sigh. “Alright, I guess I’ll leave it at that for today.” His realm began to fade, its set vanishing into the darkness as the clock ticked by, but the process reversed when he suddenly perked back up. “On second thought, there’s something you should see before you go.”

He formed a dozen panels with a sweep of the hand—system tools that looked almost suspiciously like the gods’—and navigated through the menus at a blinding speed. The room shifted as he continued his inputs, changing along with his form. He grew older and more muscular, sprouting a greying beard along with a set of equally grey scales. His only other inhuman features were his stellar eyes and the single horn that grew from his head. It was like hers, jagged and blade-like, but it grew from the opposite side of his skull.

Far more drastic than the change to his body was that to the environment. His home was still a tiny room, but the materials were no longer the same. They went from smooth, painted surfaces to ridged partitions made of bamboo. The construction was more simplistic. There were no more windows or door frames, only openings with mostly rectangular shapes. From that, she could see right away that they were still above the clouds, located near the peak of a towering mountain.

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The spirit began speaking at length, but his words were obscured and his lips were blurred. She hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was trying to say, but following his fingers out a particular window sent a jolt through the back of her brain. She didn’t pay it too much mind at first, but it only took a single gaze at the scene for her to find it awfully familiar. The memories were hazy, dull, squirrelled away in some corner or other, but they were undeniably present nonetheless.

Waves of nostalgia struck her one after another, as she gazed upon the world where the man had lived. Every mountain in the range was familiar. She could name the residents of almost every house she saw, and even recall bits of gossip spoken behind their backs. They were his memories, flowing directly into her brain through the realm that linked their minds. Through him, she could see their way of life, the seasons that came and went as they watched over the heavens. Through him, she saw Flux’s smile, blossoming time and time again. And through him, she saw the pony and the snake, presented as gifts to commemorate the day of both their births.

Turning around, the spectre flashed her a smile. It was not the usual boyish simper, but the exhausted grin of a working man. He began to speak again, but his words were masked by a high-pitched screeching, akin to a blade against a stone. The man clicked his tongue when he heard it and slowly shook his head. The previous scene, the dark room with the glowing screens, returned alongside his voice and form.

“I guess it was still too early.” The man brought a hand to his beard’s last known location and heaved a sigh. “A word of advice before I go,” he said, “don’t be fooled by Vella’s facade. She isn’t as dumb as she seems.”

Claire furrowed her brow.

“Watch your back, sharpen your horn. We’re already trapped in her web. It won’t be long before her shadow looms.”

With those words of warning, he faded into the darkness, leaving the ascended lyrkress to furrow her brow. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. He had always been there, teaching her for as long as she could remember. As far as she could tell, he had never been mistaken, but Vella was incapable of substantial thought. That much, she knew for a fact.

She was about to reflect further on the goddess’ inadequacies when she suddenly sensed the person in question. There was a rip in the darkness. A glowing pink claw tore its way through the cloth to reveal a grand cathedral. Claire took a moment to consider her options before drawing her key and rising from her bed. She didn’t feel like dealing with her. She simply didn’t have the mental bandwidth.

Opening her eyes, however, revealed that escape was not quite as easy as she had hoped. Boris was seated on the side of her bed, sound asleep with a strange spider-like monster sitting on top of his head.

She didn’t need to focus on its magic to tell that it was one of Vella’s brood. That much was clear from the construction of its body. It was largely mechanical; its mostly spider-like frame was made of a foreign, divine metal. She didn’t know all that much about the substance’s properties, but it was loaded with mana, enough to sideline any drowsiness that still remained. There was so much raw energy pooled in its claws that they glowed in a mystical light. They were a familiar shade; the spider wore the exact same colours as the goddess of war.

It raised an arm and waved at her when it noticed her gaze, but Claire faked a yawn and went right back to bed. She even rolled over for effect, looking in the direction completely opposite the shocked arachnid. Puzzled by the blatant, poor act, the palm-sized spider froze for a few seconds before scuttling off her more metallic pet and climbing over to her face. It prodded her in the nose with its sharpened toothpicks, just lightly enough not to leave a cut.

Annoyed, Claire seized the monster in one of her talons and yanked it away from her head. It struggled against her scaled fingers, waving its arms in a panic, but it was unable to break free. Eventually, it gave up fighting and resigned itself to being pinned against the sheets, at which point Claire finally sat up, smug and victorious.

Still ignoring the thing in her hands, she scanned the room and found nothing else out of the ordinary. Sylvia was sleeping by her side, Boris had one of his clones on the bed, and all the windows were closed as usual.

Chloe aside, they were the only people present in the home, and the maid was a late riser. She always tried to defend herself with the claim that she worked the afternoon shift, but Claire knew better than to believe her. After all, the human was just as lazy in the evenings. Though a much better cook than most of the other maids, she would only step into the kitchen if she was driven by a sudden craving. Curiously, it was never at mealtime that her fancies struck, but rather a few hours after lunch, or perhaps the middle of the night.

Unless Boris was to blame, the guest had let itself in—two scenarios that were equally likely, as was clear from the ikarett’s freshly wakened but still thoughtless stare.

Having determined that it wasn’t a real guest, Claire finally released the goddess’ envoy and greeted it with her coldest glare. Taking after its master, the living weapon crumpled like a house of straw. It fearfully backed itself into a corner, where it produced a web between its claws and weaved a series of words.

“I just want to talk!”

Claire was skeptical, but she nodded her head. “Talk then.”

The spider breathed a sigh of relief and produced another batch of silk. But it soon discovered that its legs were stuck in place. Turning its eyes back at Claire, it found itself locked in a staring contest, with the spider hesitant and a teasing smile upon the snake-moose’s lips.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, innocently. “You said you wanted to talk?”

Another moment of silence, with the metallic land crab breaking into an impossible sweat.

Eventually, it gave in, lowering its head as a blush crept across its metal face.

“P-please let me use my webs,” it—he—said. “I-I don’t really like to talk.” Neither his behaviour nor his mannerisms fit with the sheer depth of his voice. So gruff and manly it was that it almost seemed to linger, pervading through the room and echoing into the wood that made up its construction.

It was such an off-putting contradiction that she was almost tempted to let him have his way, but a shake of the head saw the idea dismissed.

“You said you wanted to talk,” she repeated. “So talk.”

Though somewhat distraught by the development, the spider eventually resigned himself to his fate and clacked his mandibles again. “I am Starrgort,” he said, “humble servant to Vella, the beautiful and immortal goddess of war.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “And? What does the idiot you call your goddess want from me?”

Starrgort blinked a few times, the lids across his many eyes closing in a wave, before finally piecing together a response. “She wishes to warn you of the battles to come. Visit her temple and you sha—”

“Okay. I don’t care.” Claire magically yoinked the spider out of his corner and hurled him towards the window, but he extended his legs and caught himself in the frame before he could be ejected.

“Please wait!” he shouted. “I swear she means no har—”

Claire flicked the bug and sent him flying with a vector. “I told you. I don’t care.”

Closing the window behind her, Claire returned to bed and closed her eyes. The spider was still screaming something or other and disturbing all the neighbours, but she paid him no mind. It didn’t matter what was put on the table. Vella’s business was none of hers.