For the next few days, I took a break from all of my other projects in an attempt to start understanding the changes in what I can do now. The first difference, which I’ve already mentioned, is that I can control when I Manifest my Dream Aspect. For the first time since becoming Marked, I was able to cast the Hopeful Flame spell without also becoming a big cloud dispensary. I could also Manifest seemingly as much of it as I wanted, although…I did face a minor issue in the fact that I had nowhere to store it. Between my ‘Reaching for the Moon’ spell and this latest event, I currently have an overwhelming surplus of my dream clouds, with the white and gold fibers already separated thanks to Sophia.
After the Bazaar, when we’re back to traveling through the woods everyday, I’ll have to spend a couple weeks of my watch shifts making more spinning wheels. After all, I currently have no way to use my clouds other than weaving them into Dreamsilk. And speaking of Dreamsilk, my blindfold has seen another sizable change. Ever since I realized the true nature of my Aspect, the seeing and hearing enchantments on my blindfold have become altered in a way. Anyone I see, or any words I hear, are now accompanied by that weird formless pressure, which allows me to know what emotions are guiding the thoughts and actions of the people around me.
It is nowhere near as detailed as ‘reading the minds of everyone around me’, but it’s also considerably more detailed than ‘finally being able to empathize and tell what other people are feeling’. It’s nothing more or less than getting a glimpse into the true nature of a person. For example, when I look at Sophia, I tend to see traces of: Greed, Gluttony, and Isolation. These are the qualities that push her to engage in the actions that she tends to take. Isolation is what nudged her towards contracting with me in the first place, Gluttony for Stimulation is what fuels her Greed, and Greed is what guides her towards the moon and her desire for her own world.
Another difference found in garments crafted from my dreamsilk relates back to the Leo enchantment. Ever since I first made them, Sophia has been able to pick and choose who she sends her thoughts out to, and has specifically done this a lot to have private conversations with Ash. Well, I finally am able to do the same. Whenever I send out a message into the group channel, I can almost feel a spider web extending out from my mind, and from there, I can decide which strands the message goes down. Now, I can finally have long philosophical and scientific conversations with Sean without Ash having a bunch of voices in her head, and I can finally have private conversations with Ash while I’m in the subspace and she’s down on Earth without Sophia acting as a middle man.
And finally, we have the biggest and most obvious change. Every time that I’ve fallen asleep these past few days…I go back to that place. The place where the ground is a field of clouds at sunset under a carnation sky. I’ve taken to calling it ‘Mirage’, the Fool’s Paradise. It’s the first place that really feels…mine, in any conceivable way. A place that exists only for me, where I don’t have to worry about what anyone else is thinking, where I can get away from the constant existential pressure of being a fully functioning adult human. I don’t have to worry about looking out for Ash, I don’t have to worry about looking good for Sophia, don’t have to worry about X or Duke, I can just…relax.
I’ve discovered several interesting things about Mirage during my hours there. The primary one being: Because it’s not real, because it’s a sort of dream world, I can fully control everything there. With a wave of my hand, I can turn clouds into a raging river, or a tall mountain. With a wish, wildlife appears, great forests filled with whatever plants I can remember or imagine, with a herd of Violet Bladed drinking from a pond right next to a flock of Ducks. In this place, I am all but a God of Creation, able to turn anything I want into reality. And, with nothing else to do for the hours in which I sleep, I’ve spent hours upon hours meticulously designing this dream world.
In an attempt to not turn it into a pit of chaos, filled with whatever I happen to imagine, I’ve been very selective in what I happen to create. Given that I’ve only been working for a few days, the only topography that I’ve set up is a solitary mountain shaped like an awkwardly slanted letter M. At the base in between the two peaks, I’ve built my own personal ‘residence’ that I’m calling Oasis. It’s about a one square mile stretch of land, with a beautiful crystalline pond in the middle. Around the pond, the entire square mile of land is a beautiful field of dark pink Dahlias. The only area outside of the pond that doesn’t have any flowers is a grass walkway leading to where I spend most of my time.
Inside of the cliff face below the higher of the two peaks, I’ve put in a cave, and inside of that cave is a series of perfectly furnished rooms, all with mahogany flooring and walls, with various bookshelves, desks, and dark leather chairs. Each particular room has the bookshelves full of specific kinds of books that are filled with my own memories of various topics, depending on what I intend to use that room for. In the room that I call “The Lab”, I have records of all of my memories of scientific texts, lectures, and experiments, categorized by branch. In the room that I call “The Study”, I have all of my notes, recordings of experiments, and future thoughts on my Enchanting work. In the room that I call “The Office”, I have records of every spell that I’ve either cast, or descriptions of spells that I have thought about casting.
And then there’s the “Living Room”, which is filled with ideas of things that I want to make or design in Mirage, what kind of landscapes I want to make, what kind of animals I want to create, and different experiments I could conduct to make my work in Mirage benefit me in my waking hours. Currently, I’m suffering from a lack of information. It’s only been a few days since I’ve been coming here after all, so I have no idea how any of this works. Does Mirage completely vanish whenever I wake up, and get recreated every time I go to sleep? Does it get paused? Is there a way that I can use my own Dream Clouds to change reality around me the same way that I do here? All of these questions and no way to answer them.
The last question is something that I’ve tried to do. Inside of the subspace, I generated a sizable cloud, and attempted to turn it into a rock, but…it didn’t work. For some reason, I can only naturally manipulate my Dream Aspect while I’m actually asleep, and when I’m awake, all of my attempts to manipulate my Aspect fail. I’m not quite sure what the problem is, whether there’s a trick to it that I’m not seeing, or whether it’s more of an existential issue, where I am physically incapable of manipulating an Aspect before I’m a Titled.
The first two questions though? I do have an idea on how I can get an answer to those. If you don’t know something, ask someone who does. And if that person doesn’t exist, then all I have to do is create them.
Ash’s POV
X and I have spent the past few weeks just walking around the Bazaar, seeing who’s selling what. We’ve seen several blacksmiths selling their weapons and armor, as well as other metal tools that all generally have specific purposes. I considered getting Leo a new wood carving knife, as his has gotten pretty dull from repeated use but…honestly knives are everywhere. Any town we end up in, we could easily find some decent knives for basically any task, so buying them here at the Bazaar, where prices are extremely overinflated is kind of a dumb move.
I also thought about getting something small for Sophia as thanks for letting me stay in the subspace, and literally building me my own wing in her house, but…what the hell do you get someone who has the ability to make a brand new wing in her house with the snap of her fingers? Anything I could potentially buy for her she could not only make herself, but the quality of what she could make would far exceed whatever I happened to give her. Would she still be grateful and use it as a reminder that I care? Sure, but in the process of acknowledging my appreciation, I’m pretty sure I’d just end up making her life harder, and that’s not what I want.
And so, I haven’t really bought anything at the Bazaar so far, but I’ve still been having a great time. Leo’s been coming out with us every other day to look around, but today it’s just me and X, and the relaxed silence between us. Today’s conversation has been about Sophia, and how she and Leo met. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really fully understand what he means when he talks about the ‘other world’ that he comes from, but I trust both him and Sophia enough to know that they aren’t just making it up and lying to me. Plus, if they were, then where the hell did Leo get all of his ideas for his various enchantments?
However, due to my own lack of understanding, I gave Xavier an abridged version of the truth. That Leo was from an odd place where none of the locals even considered the possibility of using magic, and instead, they worked on designing machines that would complete tasks for them by taking advantage of the natural laws of the world. That Sophia was an extremely powerful mage who happened to take notice of him, and trained him to use magic, and how he wandered through hundreds of miles of monster infested forests completely alone after that, with only Sophia’s voice in his head to keep him company.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
As I told the story, we made our way towards the middle of the Capital. Today, I was going to check out all of the local ingredients that the surrounding farmers had brought. Leo had a particular interest in what he called ‘literal Wonder Bread’, so I’d definitely need to check up on that. He’s also mentioned a few different kinds of dishes that someone could make if they had a high amount of grain, including various kinds of breaded and fried things, something he calls ‘pasta’, and a sort of bread substitute that he refers to as a ‘wrap’. I’m rather interested in trying out all of them, but apparently he doesn’t actually know how to make any of these food items. He said that where he comes from, it’s generally easy to get them pre made, so very few people actually have the ability to make them from scratch.
However, I haven’t given up hope. If people could make them in his old world, who’s to say that they can’t make them here too? There’s a definite chance that there is some bakery in this city that has made ‘pasta’ and ‘wraps’. I just have to go hunting for it, and I am more than fine with checking out a bunch of different food stalls while I’m looking. This is a trial for my stomach to overcome, but I shall persevere! None have the strength to stand in my path as I devour my way to my goal! MUAH HAH HAAA!
As we’re walking and I’m fantasizing about stuffing my face, I happen to notice an odd congregation over to my right. Now, due to the Bazaar, the fact that there’s a large crowd of people in one spot isn’t inherently unusual. After all, there are some merchants whose wares are more popular than their neighbors, and once a certain amount of people notice them, just the fact that this one particular merchant has drawn a crowd tends to catch passerbys’ eyes, causing crowds to form at an exponential rate. However, what Was inherently odd about this group of people was that it wasn’t on the edges of the street where the merchants had their blankets laid down. It was in the middle of the street, gathering the attention of all of the hundreds of people present.
“CITIZENS OF THE CAPITAL, MERCHANTS, FARMERS, AND VISITORS. HOW LONG WILL WE ALLOW THE KINGDOM TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER?!”
Standing on a raised platform in the middle of the street, a man stood, shouting to be heard over the roar of casual conversation from the large crowd. As he shouted and gathered everyone’s attention however, the conversations gradually died down, as people turned to him in confusion, and a subtle hum filled the audience as they all collectively started whispering to their friends and neighbors. What does he mean murder? Did the kingdom sanction an assassination?
“NOW SOME OF YOU MAY BE ASKING WHO EXACTLY THE KINGDOM IS GUILTY OF MURDERING. I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO YOUR SURROUNDINGS.”
The people listening to this speech at this point started taking awkward glances at the people next to them, confused. After all, they were all clearly looking at a living person, so how was the kingdom guilty of murdering them? Is this guy just stupid? Or is he insane? But by this point the crowd was quiet enough that the speaker didn’t need to shout to be heard by everyone around him.
“Now, to those of you who are not locals, you may be especially confused as to why I had you look next to you, and even if you are a local, you may have missed the point. In previous years of the Bazaar, even weeks after it initially opened, crowds were too large to properly move. Even in order to turn around and look behind you, you would have to brush against a minimum of three other people. However, this year, crowds are at an all time low, for one reason and one reason only. Bandits.”
Wait, this is a small crowd?! There are literally hundreds of people on just this street alone, but this guy’s implying that normally the crowds are worse?! I looked around, trying to judge by the audience’s reactions whether this guy was telling the truth or just full of shit, and…I saw looks of dawning comprehension. Of concern. It seemed that, for the locals, the words he said actually made sense. Judging by this, I decided to assume that he was speaking the truth.
“For crowds to be this low, Bandits must have been killing thousands of travelers every day. In order for this to even be possible, this would mean that there are tens or potentially even hundreds of thousands of bandits roaming around outside of the Capital, and yet…we’ve never caught them. Never so much as sent out soldiers to search for them. Why? Are our farmers, our merchants, our PEOPLE’S LIVES not worth protecting!? Does our Kingdom simply not care!?”
Scattered sounds of agreement echoed in a quiet wave through the audience, as his words struck deeply into the hearts of the locals, and even more deeply into the hearts of those who lost friends or loved ones to bandit attacks.
“And to top everything off, all of the food prices are exactly the same!! This clearly shows that the Kingdom isn’t experiencing any sort of shortage, despite the fact that just by common sense, we should have lost plenty of farmers and plenty of foodstuffs every time the bandits struck. However, why is that not the case? Why haven’t any of us heard about any sort of food shortage? Why haven’t we heard about astronomical prices for grain, despite the fact that logically speaking, there should be riots right now of the locals whose food stores are low!”
As the crowd started to understand where this was going, the noise gradually started to increase. Unlike before, this wasn’t a roar of casual conversation, but a roar of defiance, of people who were led to realize an ugly truth about the world. Of anger at the Kingdom. Next to me, X’s eyes narrowed as he cautiously looked around at the crowd that was growing closer and closer to becoming a full fledged riot, and angrily stared at the speaker who was riling them up.
“The only way that this makes sense to me, is that the Kingdom is sponsoring these bandits!! That they are murdering our merchants, our Farmers, OUR PEOPLE, AND STEALING FROM US.”
At this point, the crowd was roaring in upheaval, a raging river that threatened to spill over and cause absolute destruction in its surroundings. Fear raced through me as I considered what would happen after the speech was over. I grabbed onto X’s wrist so that we wouldn’t be separated. The speaker had to raise his voice back into a shout in order to be heard, the volume of his speech only serving to increase the energy of the surrounding audience.
“THEY INFLATED ALL OF OUR PRICES, MADE OUR ECONOMY, OUR ENTIRE LIVELIHOODS, COMPLETELY DEPENDENT ON THEM, AND NOW THEY’RE TRYING TO GET OUT OF PAYING US FOR OUR HARD WORK!?!? THAT’S FUCKING BULLSHIT!! THEY ARE KILLING US BY THE THOUSANDS IN ORDER TO KEEP MONEY IN THEIR OWN HANDS!!! TO ANY OF YOU WHO REMAIN UNCONVINCED, YOU TELL ME, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE FOOD!?!? WHERE THE HELL DID IT COME FROM, IF THE FARMERS WHO TRIED TO BRING IT TO US, OUR NEIGHBORS, ARE DEAD AND ROTTING IN THE GROUND?!??”
And next to the speaker…he appeared. A man wearing the same outfit that Leo had made fun of a while back. Blue pants, and a blue jacket, made of the material he and X called ‘denim’. This man was a member of the Royal Family. And the moment that he appeared, he swung his elbow into the gut of the speaker.
The speaker collapsed to his knees, gasping for air, as the crowd grew silent, yet restless. They knew that the man in blue before them was strong enough to kill most of them, but the words of the speaker still howled in their ears, accusing the Kingdom of conspiring with the bandits to murder and steal from its citizens. A violent hum seemed to emanate from the crowd, as they watched what was about to happen.
Once the speaker started falling to his knees, the man in blue swung his arm out from the speaker’s gut, and his hand circled around to grab the back of the speaker’s neck, now down by the man in blue’s waist. As he grabbed the back of the speaker’s neck, the man in blue announced,
“You have been witnessed falsely accusing your fellow man. By the laws of the Kingdom, I sentence you to death. May the Gods have mercy on your soul.”
And then, with a simple flick of the wrist, the speaker’s neck gave a resounding SNAP!, and he crumpled to the ground. Witnessing this, the crowd, which was already at the boiling point, surged up in defiance. Madness could be seen in each of their eyes, as they charged towards the Executor from the Royal Family. Cacophonous roars echoed throughout the Capital as people shoved their way forwards, intent on getting to the man in blue.
Flashes of light, bangs, shouts, all mixed together in an overwhelming surge of violence. People were being shoved to the ground and trampled, others were screaming and running in any direction, trying to escape the pandemonium. It was pure chaos, a mad riot of hundreds of people, all trying to get to one man, who was fighting them all off.
I had to get out of here, and I needed to get X out of here with me. I pulled him closer to me, then used magic to raise the earth beneath our feet, taking us up, above the crowd, above the chaos, and using my stealth spell to turn us invisible to the crowd and to the member of the Royal Family. As we rose, I sent out a message to the open channel Leo, there’s a riot happening right now, X and I are making our way back to the inn. Don’t worry, I’m fine. Meet us there in half an hour.
Once we reached the same height as the nearest rooftop, X and I hopped off, and started running back towards the Traveler’s Station. As we ran, X turned to me and asked, “Hey, would you mind not mentioning that you were the one who got us out of there?”
The fact that that’s what concerned him more than the allegations against the kingdom, the execution, or the literal riot that was going on sent pure confusion through me. “Why, are you embarrassed that a girl saved your ass?”
He shook his head. “More just worried. Leo told me to look after you, and that if anything happened…well…”
I giggled a little bit, feeling slightly warm at the thought of Leo’s overprotectiveness, and the realization that he never once actually considered letting me go off on my own and sent the great battle chef Lord Xavier to be my guard dog. I also felt a strange surge of satisfaction that X was apparently scared of Leo’s response, despite the fact that X beat Leo in that duel they’d had.
“Sure, don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the big bad Mr. Bear.” I teased him, but rather than amusement, the primary emotions I was feeling were doubt and curiosity. Why DOES the Capital still have food? When we got back to the room, I was going to ask Leo to find out what’s going on.