All at once, the subspace around me completely disappeared. Gone were the walls, the living room, the table with the remnants of last night’s game, the sheet and various objects I’d been using earlier for my various demonstrations of objects moving through space. Gone were Duke and Sophia, and the dark lightless atmosphere beyond the windows. In fact, gone was the very concept of darkness, to the point where all I could think at first was, “Wow, this is bright.”

It was like I was standing on a ski slope at noon, bright light all around me, bouncing off the soft white, blinding me from all directions. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t exactly certain how that worked, seeing as there wasn’t any kind of distinct light source, but then again, there was no distinct light source in the subspace either, and we could all see perfectly fine there. I looked around and as far as the eye…or I guess…eye enchantment in my blindfold, could see were clouds. Soft white, with streaks of gold, very reminiscent of my own Aspect Manifestation.

Under my feet, there didn’t seem to be any ground, yet somehow I wasn’t sinking. I had no idea how this could happen, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow this made perfect sense. Like somehow whatever this place was ran on the same kind of logic that children often use. Something like, “Of course you’re standing on the clouds, because that’s what your feet are on!” I had no clue why my normally very rational mind had no problem with accepting that kind of twisted logic, but something about this place made it seem…okay for some reason? I took a look upwards, taking in the beautiful, brilliant pink sky…wait…pink? Why is the sky pink? And why am I more confused about the sky being pink than I am about how I happen to be standing on top of clouds? Also…a somewhat even more important question…

“Where the hell am I? And how did I get here?”

“LEO!!!”

Sophia’s voice rang in my head through the soulbond. She seemed to be shouting hysterically, so I responded as quickly as I could, “I’m okay, I’m just…somewhere weird. Sorry I left like that, honestly didn’t expect an enchantment to accidentally teleport me. I have no idea why it did though. As far as I’m aware, I don’t generally associate clouds with teleportation. The place I’m in is full of them though, so maybe that’s why? But then that begs the question of why my other enchantments don’t sometimes just randomly teleport me towards the symbol that I engrave. Like, I definitely remember making a spider enchantment once, why didn’t I get zoomed to the nearest arachnid? ”

Relief seemed to flood through her voice, but also laced with confusion, “Thank the gods you’re alright, but…what do you mean? You didn’t teleport. Your body is lying right in front of me. The moment you activated that enchantment you just collapsed.”

Wait…What? “If my body’s there…then what the hell happened to me?”

“That’s what I’m asking you! Describe where you are, maybe that can help us figure things out.”

“Well, there are clouds everywhere, white with gold streaks, looking a lot like my Aspect manifestation. Also the sky is pink.”

“Wait, did you say the sky is pink?” She asked, dumbstruck.

“Yeah, that’s the part that got to me too, why, do you know something?” I asked in return.

“I know that the sky is blue. If the sky is pink where you are…is it actually the sky?”

“Well, I mean, it’s above the clouds, so if it’s not the sky, it’s definitely got some explaining to do.”

“What I mean is, are those actually clouds under your feet? After all, you can’t just stand on nothing but clouds, and the sky isn’t pink. Which means that the clouds probably aren’t clouds, so the sky probably isn’t a sky.”

Hmm…Fair point. I tried to think rationally about everything that’s happened.

Clouds.

Magic.

Aspect Manifestations.

Stories.

People.

And gradually, it all started coming together in my head. As common as it is to colloquially refer to clouds as something representing ‘comfort’ and ‘softness’, there is another concept that clouds are often used to represent. To be precise, it’s actually three concepts. Movies, TV shows, and especially cartoons and comic books, they’ve always used clouds to represent these three intertwined ideas that all feed into each other. Whether they’re used to depict a flashback, a theorized event, or a night of sleep. Clouds have often been used to represent the concepts of Memory, of Imagination, and…of Dreams.

A long time ago, back in my old world, I was having a conversation with a coworker of mine. She was one of those people who believed very strongly in astrological signs, in the powers of certain crystals, and the prophetic natures of dreams. I think it’s quite obvious that the two of us fought quite constantly, between her general disposition to operate based on faith and my general disposition to operate based on reason. During one specific conversation of ours, she had told me of an instance in which a dream that she had had actually occurred in reality, and tried to use that as an example that dreams could be used to tell the future. My response to her words:

“Dreams are nothing more than stories that we tell ourselves. Stories with no plot, no ending, no structure. They are a manifestation of the subconscious, of memory, of imagination, all swirling together to tell a vague tale. If what you dream becomes reality, then that means that your subconscious mind was picking up clues from your memories and predicting a possible future, but it’s no more true than the daydreams you imagine to escape your own reality.”

All at once, it clicked. My Aspect of Reality, the concept that I have such obscene compatibility with that I can Manifest it even as a Marked, is the Aspect of Dreams. Of memory, thought, and imagination, all swirling together to form a story that you tell yourself. How often did I completely zone out, remembering things that happened years ago? How often did I throw myself headlong into any story I could find, taking the character’s lives as my own? How often did I desperately try to escape my own reality, trapping my own conscious mind inside of daydreams of worlds, of stories, of memories of things that I had completely invented from scratch?

I thought of the spells that I’ve cast that have Manifested my Aspect in the past.

The story of the Nomads, as they Dream for a peaceful night’s sleep.

The story of my own personal Dreams for the future.

The story of Sophia, the girl who Reached for the Moon.

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Looking back on it, my whole life I’ve been running from reality, and escaping into my own dreams. Escaping into these stories, intentionally not giving them any sort of structured plot, so that I could constantly explore some new made up aspect of them. Is it really that surprising that I have such a ridiculous compatibility with The Aspect of Dreams? As I had these realizations, I felt…a shudder passing through my body. No, not my body, my very soul. As though I had gently brushed upon something that was housed in the deepest parts of me. I wasn’t quite close enough to fully break it open, to become a Titled, but I was infinitely closer than I had been. Just like Sean’s Aspect was Obscured Tide, representing not the ocean in general, but the most unknowable mysteries of the deep, or just like Sophia, who was both Desire and Flame made flesh, Dreams were only a part of my Aspect. Most likely, it would be one specific Facet of the Aspect of Dreams, or a secondary connected Aspect.

All I knew was…I’m on the right track. I’m close. I told Sophia about what I’d realized. Now the only problem was…If I’m in a dream…how the hell do I wake up? I had an idea, but it seemed a little…ill advised. As though the idea had come from the same part of my mind that accepted the childlike logic of being able to walk on clouds because they were there and under your feet. However, I didn’t really have any better ideas, so I called out,

“Hey, Sophia?”

“Yeah?”

“This is gonna come across as a little weird, but…I need you to slap me.”

The next thing I knew, my surroundings were suddenly significantly darker, the glistening white surroundings shifting to the pitch black yet somehow still perfectly visible surroundings in the subspace. The change in lighting, despite the fact that I could see perfectly well in both places, caused my vision to need some time to adjust. Also my cheek was stinging. Apparently, my stupid idea had worked, although judging by just how much my face now hurt…

“God damn it Soph, how hard did you hit me!? Were you holding that one in or something?”

“I just based it on how hard you tend to do it.”

“Yeah but I’m not a masochist like you are! Plus, your strength isn’t sealed at the moment, so next time, only go half as hard.”

“Yes Sir. Wait, next time?” Sophia started to ask, but…

“I kinda feel like I’m hearing things that are none of my business right now, so changing the topic, what the hell was up with the cloud enchantment? The moment you activated it you just passed out, and a bunch of those clouds of yours popped into existence, even more than the amount that showed up at the campfire.” Duke butted in. Oops. I had completely forgotten that he was there. Beside me, I watched the flames coursing throughout Sophia’s body shift up as her throat and face flushed in embarrassment. Honestly, with how bad I am at reading facial expressions, I’m actually rather grateful that her emotional state is so easy to discern. I answered Duke’s question.

“I had forgotten that in my world, clouds are also used to represent dreams. Apparently, despite me forgetting this representation, my subconscious mind is still far more likely to associate clouds with dreams than it is to associate clouds with comfort, hence, my passing out. The clouds that I generate are something that manifests whenever I use magic relating to dreams in some way. Though I’m thinking…Now that I know what it is, I might be able to control it a little better.” I responded, raising my hand and letting out a wisp of cloud on command. I still couldn’t really manipulate it in any way, but now that I knew what I was trying to do, Manifesting it was…simple.

As my vision adjusted to the darkness of the subspace, I finally got to look at the two of them, and…They looked rather different than they had before I fell unconscious. Not that they’d changed in any way, but it was like…I saw more? It was difficult, almost impossible to put into words, but…it was almost like I could see a duplicate image of Sophia superimposed on top of her. As though my entire life I’ve only been seeing things in two dimensions, and now I was finally able to actually perceive depth. This added dimension, from the few seconds that I’ve spent with it, seems to have one solid pro and one solid con.

On one hand, the details of Sophia that I can see are…fuzzy. As though the overlaid image wasn’t lined up just right, so the outline of her silhouette, the shape of her face, even the edges of the flames dancing throughout her body, they all had a certain haze to them. Not enough to be considered debilitating in any way, but just…off. On the other hand, on the extra image, the deeper one, the amount of information I could ‘see’ had vastly increased. It felt like…I was looking directly into her mind. Not her thoughts per se, but more like…the pressure that exists in her mind that guides her thoughts down their common paths. It was a formless, swirling, vague Something, that I wasn’t really Seeing but somehow I was picking up with my eyes.

A decent example is how you could ‘see’ heat in the form of a haze in the air, slightly distorting whatever you happen to be looking at. You know that heat doesn’t actually ‘look’ like anything, but somehow, with your eyes, you’re still picking up that something is hot. This was somewhat the same thing, I knew that what I was looking at didn’t actually ‘look’ like anything, but I could still pick up that that Something was…

Greedy.

Lonely.

Gluttonous, though not for food. More for…stimulation.

Was I looking at Sophia’s subconscious somehow? Is this due to my realization that my own Aspect is Dreams, or due to the fact that my eyes were replaced by a blindfold literally woven from Dream Aspect Manifestation Cloth? Also, now that I know what my Aspect is, I’m thinking of calling my cloth ‘Dreamsilk’. But back to the point…Either way, I think that I’m looking at the subconscious mind right now. But how does that make sense? Wasn’t my Aspect Dreams, not Thought?

Well, at some level, subconscious thought, dreams, imagination, and memory are all tightly interwoven, but…are they necessarily the same thing? Or are they separate? You could argue that the subconscious mind is constructed by memory, built piece by piece by all of the experiences that you’ve had throughout your entire life, but the two of them are very different in terms of how they affect our daily lives. The subconscious mind is… well…subconscious, we don’t really have any sort of access to it. Meanwhile, memories, we do have access to. So are they the same thing, where the subconscious mind is something along the lines of Applied Memory?

And then there’s the fact that an extremely large portion of Memory is actually pure Imagination. There’s a concept in Neurology known as Neuroplasticity, basically, as we get older, and our brain grows and changes, the various neural pathways that our memories run through change along with them, and along the way, bits and pieces of our memories are lost. In order to avoid experiencing fragmented memories, every time a little piece of memory is lost, the brain automatically fills in the missing parts with whatever it believes should be there. Little things, a green shirt instead of a red one, the word ‘tired’ instead of ‘sleepy’, etc. However, after enough permutations of these small changes, eventually you end up with a completely different memory than you originally had. This is why two different people can remember the same event completely differently, and this is also why we can sometimes end up attaching completely unrelated emotions to certain memories.

For example, I don’t particularly remember a single instance in which I was happy in my childhood. However, did I ever experience a good day? Absolutely, even if it was something as simple as a day I got to relax and read a good book, that could still classify as a memory in which I was happy. However, after a while, my memories of those specific days started to fade, and in response to that fading memory, my brain automatically filled the gaps with my various…not particularly positive emotions towards my family and my life in general during that time period. This is why, despite the fact that there were definitely days in which I probably experienced some form of happiness when I was young, whether I could recognize it with my emotional colorblindness or not, I have no actual happy memory associated with it.

Also, what are memories anyway if not dreams of the past? What are dreams if not imagined memories? When it comes to the mind, because we don’t fully understand how it works, everything is jumbled together, as we attempt to piece apart different phenomena and put labels on each and every experience. But…Is that right? Do thoughts, memories, imagination, and dreams all have to be their own separate things? Couldn’t they all just be wrapped up into one singular concept? I don’t know.

And all of this is purely from a Neurological perspective, but then you have to remember…The soul is apparently a thing that exists. How does this fit in with everything else? What’s the difference between the Brain, the Mind, and the Soul? Is there a difference? Are they all interconnected? These are questions that I just have no possible way of knowing even where to start asking. Maybe if there was some sort of God of the Mind who I happened to have on speed dial, or even just a Titled…

Wait, didn’t Sean say that he recognized my Aspect from his interactions with another Titled? Doesn’t that mean that I potentially have a connection to someone who could help me? Someone who may be able to start building my understanding of these concepts that are just way out of my depths?

Hey Sean, I sent through the Open Channel, and somehow, I felt more…connected to it than I had before. As though my mind was actually on some level spread out across both Hell and Earth, through a web that I had unknowingly spun by handing out my Leo enchantments. Just this alone, due to the fact that I had already previously theorized that my Leo enchantment functioned as a small scale soulbond, already insinuated a connection between the Dream Aspect and the soul.

“Leo? How can I help you?” He replied, and I could hear…something extra behind his words. An undefined sort of pressure, almost like the incoherent chatter you’d find in a crowded room, yet it was completely silent. Similar to what I saw when I looked at Sophia, as though what I was seeing and hearing were the background thoughts, dreams, imagination, and memories that guided his words. Not enough to fully understand exactly why he said things the way he did, but enough to pick out…Pride, Respect, and Wrath. I decided to ignore that for now, due to the fact that I don’t really know anything about Sean’s background, so making any sort of assumptions would only serve to confuse me as I explore my new capabilities.

Do you still have contact with that Titled who could Manipulate the Dream Aspect? I asked.

A warm chuckle came through the telepathic bond as he replied, “So you’ve finally Awakened! Congratulations. And no, I haven’t spoken to him in millennia, though even if I knew where he was, he wouldn’t be able to help you. His particular path was the route of Nightmares. He specialized in leading your thoughts and imagination to a place of Fear. Yours however, doesn’t give off that same feeling.”

I nodded, though I knew that he couldn’t see me. Yeah, rather than Nightmares, if I’m just going by what would be most logical for me to have a strong affinity for, it would most likely be something like… The Stories We Tell Ourselves In Order to Escape from Reality. Of course, with the way that my brain works, I also can’t rule out pieces like subconscious thought. After all, most of my thoughts could probably technically be considered subconscious seeing as I have little to no way to actually access them without acting on them or voicing them.

“While in the pursuit of what you call ‘science’, it often works wonders to break things down to their simplest pieces and attempt to understand each one individually, when it comes to magic, I have to recommend that you avoid such a mindset. As you walk your path to Divinity, rather than separating yourself piece by piece to understand yourself and your Aspect, it will be far more beneficial for you to look at yourself in a more…holistic manner.”

Thanks for the advice, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.

We chatted for a while about some different ways that the Nightmare Titled tended to use his magic. Not so that I could replicate it necessarily, but more so that I could get a starting point, an idea on how to start developing my own style.