Of course, Raven would disobey.

Not only did his partnership with Van depend on staying the course with their designs on Valentine Chessex, but he was also intrigued by her. Raven had long ago formed a theory about Lamgard Division, the transformative process every Lamgardian endures when they become adults. Those who are unable to cope with the burden are mentally crushed, their minds split in half which usually reduces them to brain-dead stumps.

Yet, despite starting the Division at only ten years old and subsequently enduring the Splits, Valentine Chessex was not only sane, but thriving. This told Raven two things: that she had outrageous talent rivaled by only the best souls Fallowreyk had to offer, and that she was walking a razor-thin path of destruction. Veer left or right just a span, and her mind was liable to self-destruct.

How she kept control of her two halves, Raven didn’t know, but he was aching to find out. And his goal would not be stymied by Fanny Fyre. However, he was expecting her to try.

“You really think Master Fyre will show up?” Van asked, shivering.

They crouched together on the roof of a two-story meat souk overlooking the shadowy central plaza of the city. Taller pointed steeples surrounded the square in black ink shapes amongst the snowfall. For the last hour, they had been reconnoitering, waiting for Valentine to arrive for their predetermined duel. A foot of fresh snow caked the wide yard. The shops were all closed up, silent as the night. In the center of the circular space was an ornate black post with a four-sided clock. The faces were powerfully illuminated by a pandora within.

“I don’t know,” Raven replied. “But I’m prepared for it all the same.”

“It’s so damn cold!” he said, huddling into a ball and hugging his legs. “How do you stand this weather?”

“Here.” Raven extended his arm, and a pandora floated out. “You can borrow Glass Blower tonight.”

Van took the card with wide eyes. “Is this a Class Five? Wow. I can literally feel the magic coming from it. What does it do?”

“Among many things, it produces heat. Place it on your chest, and it will warm you up. I need you in top shape if my plan is to be successful. You’re sure you have it memorized?”

“Don’t get all excited,” he said, slipping the pandora down his neck. He shivered as warmth spread through him, and then smiled lazily. “Oh yeeeeaah… that’s the good stuff.”

“Shh!”

Raven crouched lower, looking over the edge of the roof. A shadow approached from the West. The form of Valentine slowly took shape. She carried a rucksack and walked with a determined gait. Raven smiled in excitement.

“Alright, it’s time. Van, get to your position.”

He turned his head, but Van was gone. Raven looked about everywhere in surprise. He had vanished like a ghost.

Now that’s interesting. You have some hidden talents, don’t you, my friend?

He put Van’s disappearing act out of mind for the time being. Valentine had made it to the clock, and stood waiting. She wore nothing besides her short dress, but seemed little more affected by the cold than he was. In fact, she seemed hot, so mean was her countenance.

She really is looking for a fight. Well, I guess I better not disappoint.

___

Valentine stood at the ready, watchful for her enemy.

“Well, not really my enemy,” she said quietly to herself. She gracefully brushed snow from her shoulder and then clasped her hands together.

“No, he’s definitely our enemy, and I need to beat him to a pulp,” she said in a stronger voice. Valentine Sword’s mouth formed a sneer. “This will be a victory not just for me, but for the school and even the whole city. You know what’s he’s doing.”

Valentine Shield winced. “Yes… I don’t know why no one else can see it, but it’s plain as day. He wants the Titan to come to Roespeye. He’s begging for it.” She shuddered. “Such an awful objective.”

“Awful… and stupid!” She growled beneath her breath. “Why would anyone tempt the Tyrant to kill him? He’s so arrogant, risking lives just for his ego. I want to wipe the smugness right off his face.”

“Oh dear.” Shield frowned and placed a hand on her cheek. “Can’t we offer him a truce instead? He’s so very smart. Maybe we can reason with him and even call him a friend?”

“No!” Sword nearly shouted. “He treated me like garbage. Everyone laughed at me in Master Smith’s class. Or they would have… if they weren’t so afraid of Raven. I’m not afraid.”

“Van is with him.”

She became silent, leaning back against the clock.

“I know.”

“We should talk to him,” Shield said gently. “We know him. Van wouldn’t join with someone like Raven without a good reason.”

“Wouldn’t he? Van’s not in the business of nice. He’s a street urchin with his ear wedged into every door, window, and wall in the city.”

“But he’s a very nice urchin. A handsome urchin.”

Valentine blushed furiously. “That has nothing to do with this! We’re here to fight Whitesong and that’s all there is to it. Even if it means Van won’t like me… even if he comes to despise me.”

She became sullen, using her boot to draw a circle in the snow.

“He’s a nice urchin,” Valentine Shield said comfortingly.

“Yeah…” Sword replied.

The crunch of snow alerted her, and she stood at attention. From the shadows of an unlit street came a deeper shadow.

“I didn’t think you’d show,” Valentine said, folding her arms. She flashed a smile full of false confidence.

“Were you expecting me?” a gravelly voice replied.

Valentine’s smile faded. That was not Raven Whitesong’s voice. The cloaked figure appeared, revealed by the light of the clock. He wore robes similar to Raven’s, but his face was covered by a white mask. The cover had no holes for eyes or mouth. Instead two small handprints were impressed where the eyes would normally be. And a small black line formed an impish grin.

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“You are Whitesong. Don’t try to deny it.”

The figure reached inside his robes. Valentine flinched, quickly reaching to her pack and producing three pandora. But the masked fiend revealed something she did not expect.

“Look at this,” the strange voice commanded, holding up his hand. His painted grin seemed to widen.

It was another mask, similar in form. This one was black, with a crude butterfly etched into the surface. He continued to hold it beside his head so that his mask was side-by-side.

“What’s that supposed to be?” she demanded. “Are we going to duel or not?”

“Valentine!” a sudden shout came.

She and her adversary both looked at the source. To her surprise, Vanyard von Sephim came running from another street, caked in snow and looking wild and desperate. Valentine was stunned. She had guessed she might see him tonight, but not in such a state.

“That’s not Raven!” he shouted. “Get away from him! He wants to kill you!”

She stepped back in uncertainty. The masked man had started to approach her, still holding up the second mask like a talisman, as if to ward off evil.

“Valentine!” a second shout echoed in the court.

All three people present whirled at the new source coming from the opposite side. This time, Fanny appeared, holding up a pandora threateningly. She glared at the masked man.

“I told you not to come here!” she shouted angrily. “We had a deal!”

“RUN!” Van shouted desperately.

Valentine looked back at the masked man and gasped. In a flash, he had bolted and was now only a few spans away. Van dashed for them, reaching out his hand. Valentine swiped her pandora, and they began to glow, but the masked man ducked, plunging a pandora of his own into the snow.

“Too slow,” he said with an evil chuckle.

The snow was obliterated in a moment, bursting into steam before clearing in the cold air. And beneath their feet was a complex seal within a seal, which he and Valentine were standing right in the middle of. Each of the lines immediately burst into a red glow as the seal activated.

“What? When did you…?”

Van reached them and grabbed her arm. But that was it. All went dark, and the night faded into nothing.

___

Raven and Van opened their eyes.

The open night had been replaced, now a dimly lit room with damp stone walls, lichen swaddling the corners. A small pedestal stood in the middle of the room with a brass candelabrum, and an open doorway led to a dank hall.

Van looked around, turning in place. “Is this…?” he ventured.

Raven hummed. “We’re inside Valentine’s mind.”

“Fascinating. It’s darker than I assumed.”

“Really? I wasn’t expecting it to be so quiet. I don’t hear a thing.”

“That was a close call. I thought you would be forced to activate the seal before I could make it.”

“I almost had to.”

“What about Master Fyre? Will she be able to interfere in the real world?”

“No. My seal within a seal includes a Hydra-infused physical shield that will last an hour. More than enough time. Right now, she can only watch our bodies as they stand within the runescape.”

Van traipsed around the small room, marveling at it all. “So, answer me this. You said that the seal you drew up would trap all those within and allow us to enter the mind of the subject, meaning Valentine. So, what are we right now?”

“We are the subconscious manifestations of our own soul psyches.”

“Manifested by Valentine,” Van concluded.

“Correct.”

“Then, how do I still have my ‘dora?” He reached to his neck and produced the card that Raven had given him earlier. “Everything else I had in my pockets isn’t there anymore. Because she couldn’t see them, right? So… her brain couldn’t manifest them into form. I understand that part. But if Valentine never saw my pandora either, how is that possible?”

“Pandora are human souls.” He crouched and began to draw lines in dust on the floor. “The seal I created features two Lam-Mun-Pro variants with a sweeping tri-Zal inlay. The inlay is important, because it allows for the insert of soul psyches forcefully into the mind. Pandora are no exception.”

“I’m doing fine, thanks for asking,” Rue piped up.

“This is why it was important that she saw me holding the masks.” Raven stood back up and produced from his robes the mask he had been wearing, along with the black butterfly mask. He handed that one to Van. “She saw the masks and associated them to me. So, I still have them here. Now, we begin phase two. And it’s starting as perfectly as I envisioned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take a look above the door.”

Van looked to see something easily missed to an untrained eye. Scratched into the stone was a large rectangular border, and within, a weaving of hundreds of seemingly random lines. A haphazard net of sorts.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Depends on how much you know about the human mind.”

“My father used to talk about it all the time. The ‘Mind Web,’ right?”

Raven sneered. “Obnoxious slang. It’s called the Holy Frame.”

Van rolled his eyes.

“Anyways,” Raven said with a short grunt. “That is Valentine’s frame. The unique pattern of her mind’s makeup. Now look at what I drew into the ground. Would you say it’s identical?”

Van studied the etching in the floor and the frame above the door for several minutes. “Yeah, looks perfect.”

“Good. Then I have memorized it. Let’s be going.”

He placed his mask over his face. The cover suctioned onto his skin. Van did the same. Eyes appeared on both masks in splashy ink lines that moved as their own eyes did. They looked at each other and nodded. The door lead to a long corridor in both directions. Raven looked each way several times.

“You don’t know where to go, do you?” Van said.

“Nope. I’ve never been inside Valentine’s mind before. Have you?”

“Funny. Well, let’s go left.”

“Why left?”

“Valentine is left-handed.”

“As good a reason as any.”

“Raven, I can feel her,” Rue said.

“Really?” he replied. “Which way then?”

“Left.”

Raven clapped Van on the back. “Good intuition.”

They calmly traversed the passage side-by-side. One right turn led to a left. And this happened many times. No doors or side corridors presented themselves, and the setting was uniform – stone walls lit by candelabra every twenty spans or so. And as the minutes passed, Van began to grow tense.

“Relax,” Raven finally said when his fisted knuckles started turning white.

“You said this was dangerous,” he replied.

“Not for us.”

“Just for Valentine. That doesn’t make you at least apprehensive?”

“I mitigate the costs of fear with preparation.”

“You were the one who said this whole plan was risky.”

Raven hummed. “I won’t avoid the truth. I am risking Valentine’s life. But not without purpose. I think you know as well as I do that she’s dead already. It’s just a matter of time.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Actually I do. I just had no desire to tell you before we started. Valentine is dying.”

Van stopped to look at him. Raven did as well.

“That’s not true. It can’t be.”

Raven raised his hands in irritation. “Do you think I’m doing all this for my health? Do you think I blatantly disobeyed a teacher and devised a complex and dangerous seal to enter the mind of a girl I barely knew existed just a few days ago?”

Van folded his arms. “Yes.”

“Ok, well you may have me there. But I’m not reckless.” He continued walking and Van followed. “Valentine is dying. No one can survive long without an intact frame of mind. But there’s a good chance I can save her life, depending on if I’m right about what’s happening in the first place. So far, I’d say I’ve not given you any reason to doubt. But what do you say?”

“I’d say I’m scared for Valentine. I’m not afraid to admit that.”

“Then put your trust in me. Regardless of what happens, remember that you gave your all to save her life when, before this chance, she was doomed.”

He suddenly stopped, sensing a change, and peeked around another corner. Van stretched over him and did likewise. The hall abruptly ended and led into a massive empty chamber. There was adequate light, but the cavity was so large, darkness consumed the greatest portion. And far in the distance, they could see three people. They stood close to a shining golden object resembling a huge painting frame.

Raven and Van drew back.

“They all look like Valentine,” Van said.

“Yes. Those are the three divisions of her soul psyche. Mind, Sword, and Shield. They are all present, which is exactly what I’d hoped.” He produced a new pandora from his robes. This one featured a golden eagle mid-flight. It began to glow.

Van looked around the corner again. One of the Valentines was wandering the sanctuary, wary and alert. But the other two were still as statues; each stood on one side of the golden frame, holding the ends of what appeared to be a white rope of some kind. They held it taut while staring straight ahead. He looked back at Raven to ask a question, and then nearly jumped at the new sight.

Instead of one masked Raven, there were now two standing beside each other.

“Holy wild! You could have warned me.”

“I told you when we planned all this,” one of them said. “This pandora, Free Regions, allows me to split my own psyche into its Sword and Shield personas.”

“Without it, no part of my scheme would be possible,” the second Raven followed.

“I thought only a Lamgardian could do that.”

“In the physical world, this is true, but we are on a mental plane. I am a projection only.”

“Uh, let’s get started,” Van said. The ink of his mask changed to relay disgust. “Too much of this and I might really freak out.”

“Very well. I’ll go first,” the second Raven replied. “Wait for the signal. But Van, remember… be brave. How would you want Valentine to see you in her dreams? Keep that question in your mind. Everything you desire can be had here and now. But you must be brave.”