Ayane gasped as a black shape came down over Henry’s eyes. Then she leapt to her feet when he fell to the ground and started convulsing. Someone grabbed her arm and she turned on her heel, striking whoever had grabbed her.
Her hands struck crystal. It was Clody. “Don’t do it Ayane,” said Clody, rubbing their cheek. “It’s over.”
Ghun giggled, covering his mouth with his hand. “I know you’ve been plotting to run away with ‘Hahn’, that he’s actually a real boy from San Francisco. Nothing goes on in my domain without my knowing.”
“Did you do this?” she demanded, glaring at Clody. “You betrayed us didn’t you?!”
“No!” Clody shouted.
“It surely was,” said Ghun, with a grim nod.
She slapped them again.
Bèng-dá groaned. “No, it was me. I thought he looked familiar so I slipped one of my tattoos on his head the day we met. I’ve known everything pretty much the whole time.” He wiggled his fingers and a little black worm crawled around them under his skin. Looking at Henry, he said, “I gotta say, I wouldn’t welcome you into my family. Disloyal.”
“Now I’m afraid this really will be where we part ways,” said Ghun, steepling his fingers. “You’ll get your wish to leave my side, Ayane dear; Bèng-dá has paid a lovely price for you. Say farewell to your dear Henry, and to Clody.”
Ayane looked over at Henry, then she looked over at Clody. She mouthed something to them, and then she sat down at her harp and began to play, ajana aglow. At once, the sky began to boil.
Bèng-dá looked out the corner of his eye at her. “What’s she doing?”
“Don’t take your eyes off the boy, who knows what tricks he might pull,” Ghun warned. “And I believe she’s just seeing him off with a dirge—”
A bolt of lightning crashed down like a sword, cleaving the ceiling in two.
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Clody ran down to the secret room, sure they were being chased, until they threw themselves down the buttery stairs and rolled ass over teakettle into Henry’s old butt. Then they saw that there was literally no one after them. With a sigh, they pushed themselves up and hurried over to the secret stair. After all, someone might come.
They limped down into the lab, to find Braehar hard at work on her contribution to the plan, a tablet made from leftover material from Henry’s arm. She was etching a complex web of spells into it and did not look up when Clody entered.
“Henry and Ayane got found out,” Clody gasped out. “Ghun’s gonna sell her to the foreigner, and he’s torturing Henry right now. I think Ayane is going to try to move forward with the plan!”
Braehar removed her goggles and sighed, wiping the sweat from her brow. “‘The best laid plans of dwarves and men will often go awry.’ Something like this was bound to happen,” she said. “The device is functional, but in this state it will work only once.”
“So what do we do?” asked Clody.
“Wait until the best possible moment to use it,” she said, then she picked up the tablet and headed for the stairs.
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Henry lay on the ground, convulsing, as the living tattoo attacked him. It hurt more than anything he’d experienced, worse than the worst days of his cursed arm. So he retreated within himself, into the mindscape. There he could think.
Even now, he was still conscious of his body, but it felt like the pain was happening to someone else. He was relieved to find that the tattoo wasn’t eating him or anything like that, just sending waves of magic into his nerve endings. He wasn’t sure about whether that could do permanent damage, but he knew he had to do something quick.
Behind him, the wall cracked. He sighed, turning to see a pink eye glaring through the crack. “I know what you’re thinking, Leila.” he said.
“That I’m free?” she asked. “Because I am.” The crack widened, revealing part of her face. It was flickering between a girl’s face, his face, and a maw of mirror shards.
“I hate you,” said Henry. “You’ve made my life a living hell. I think you may have actually ruined it, because I have no idea how I can go back after living through all of this, if I make it back at all.”
She chuckled. “Are you going to cry again?” The crack widened again, and she started moving to squeeze through it, her body molding to the shape and flowing like quicksilver.
“I don’t have it in me to cry right now,” said Henry, shaking his head. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, goodbye.”
She stopped as she slammed into an invisible barrier. Try as she might, she could not force her way further into the mindscape. “What do you mean goodbye?”
“Well, I’m definitely not going to let you have the satisfaction of killing me,” said Henry. “I’m going to go back into my body and let Ghun and Bèng-dá kill me. You know who they are.” He opened the connection between them, letting her experience the memories of the last few days.
She scowled. “Why on Earth would you give them the satisfaction?”
“Because I hate you more than I hate them,” said Henry. “I hate you just as much as you hate me. Probably more.” He turned his back on her.
“I know what you’re doing,” Leila hissed. “You’re trying to manipulate me into helping you. But I wouldn’t lift a finger for you, do you understand?”
“I do,” he said. “Good talk. I’ll even let you have the last word, so make it good.”
Leila growled. “I’m not going to help you. I don’t care if you die by someone else’s hand. I’ll eat your corpse and shit on your grave.” A moment passed. “It’s not my fault you let your strongest captured figment get injured so badly. If it were me I would have just combined them all into one big bastard.”
Henry turned back to look at her. Then he gave her a crooked smile. “Thanks Leila. You really helped me out here.”
“Bastard!” He forced the boundary shut and let out a long, shuddering sigh. That had been extremely risky, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep her out while still gleaning information from her. It looked like the curse he'd placed on her had finally worn off, so she would be coming soon.
Hopefully, by the time she arrived Ghun would be dealt with.
He dashed over to the bookshelf and picked up Ordog’s book. The man would be too volatile to control, and besides, Ghun already knew how to subdue him. Henry tore out the pages with his personality, his addictions, his ambitions, leaving just his power and his magic. He was a flat villain, all flaws and power, and with his bad qualities stripped away, all that was left was power. He shuffled the chosen pages into the damaged T-Rex book—whose title had since changed to Azhi. The black pages of the nightgaunt were crawling around the shelf like a sheaf of caterpillars; he hadn’t paid it enough attention to properly flatten the thing. He shuffled those into Azhi’s book too.
The book was wriggling in his hands now, crackling with power, but it wasn’t quite right. Henry didn’t know exactly what he was making. He considered one of the hideous multi-limbed monsters Leila had summoned back at the speakeasy, but that wasn't right. This conglomerate of powers didn’t want to be shaped like that. He flipped through the pages, trying to make the words make sense together. Henry noticed several of the pages were marred with twisting patterns like coiling dragons; Azhi must have consumed some of Bèng-dá’s ink when he locked jaws with the final nightgaunt. It wasn’t quite enough to add anything of value, but it gave Henry an idea.
He sent a tendril of his awareness out into his body and was almost flattened by the pain. The mindscape pulsed; the book tried to jump from his hands, and the crack returned to the wall.
Henry reached out again, trying to manage the pain and the dreamscape at the same time. It felt like he was being torn in half, but he did it, though the crack didn’t disappear, and he could hear Leila trying to break through on the other side.
He pulsed magic into his cursed arm, and his stone glove shattered. He lifted his hand up to his own face. It felt like it weighed a thousand tons, and it moved with glacial slowness. He touched it to the tattoo, and he bade it to consume.
Another book appeared on the shelf, though it was barely a book at all, more like a pamphlet. Henry took it apart, shuffling it into his new book. The pieces all clicked into place.
He jolted upright, and as he rose, a great dragon rose up behind him. Its scales were jade and onyx, and it had three glowing green eyes.
Henry took in the scene; the great hall split nearly in half, rain pouring through the gash in the ceiling, the scent of ozone and cordite in the air, the fleeing courtiers and servants. There was Ghun, taking it all in like it was great fun. And Bèng-dá rising from the ground, his black suit scorched off, a thousand wriggling tattoos crawling over his chest. Henry pointed at Bèng-dá and Ghun. “Kill them.”
Azhi roared and his voice shattered every window in the palace.
Ghun looked up at the dragon and clicked his tongue. “I liked the dinosaur better.” He leapt at Azhi in a burst of amber light, striking him in the face with the sound of rock breaking against rock.
“Not so fast,” said Bèng-dá, holding out his hand. A small tattoo on the underside of his wrist extended into a long, black blade, which he held to Ayane’s neck. She stopped playing. “You stop right there, Henry. You wanna go back to your aunt, don’t you? Then grow up. Give up this little fantasy world, stop fighting, and I’ll take you home.”
Henry thought about it. “You’re probably the only person dumber than your brother,” he said, throwing open his robe. Even now he wore his father’s gunbelt under it, and once again the bullet loops had been fitted with tiny glass jars. But this time, they weren’t filled with ritual components. A sigil formed on his dreamsilver hand and he swept it over the belt and up, and the iron shavings inside burst out like little fountains, swirling into the shape of a dozen little stiletto daggers, orbiting his head like a halo.
“Dumbass,” said Bèng-dá. “You need to understand, this bitch isn’t real. Look, I’ll show you—” Henry slashed his hand forward and three daggers flew through the air like bullets. Bèng-dá put his arms together, conjuring a shield of scintillating ink.
Henry’s fingers formed the disruptor and fired a blast of pink. It outraced the daggers and shredded the shield, and a moment later the daggers hit home.
Bèng-dá looked down at the daggers. Blood spilled from his wounds, and ink dribbled from his tattoos. His sword melted. “That was…pretty cool.” Then Ayane picked up her harp and smashed it over Bèng-dá’s head. He folded like a towel. Glaring down at him, she strummed out a little melody, and another lightning bolt split the sky. The daggers carried it straight into his heart, and Bèng-dá died.
Ayane stepped over him and closed the distance with Henry, folding him into her arms.
He froze up for a moment. “Ayane, I—”
“Don’t say anything,” she said, then she let him go. “Should we escape?"
He turned around. Ghun had grown nearly to Azhi’s size and was exchanging blows with him, laughing as they clashed. He moved like a dancer, or a capoeirista, and whenever they struck each other, the hall hook. “If we don’t kill Ghun, Leila will keep following me,” said Henry.
A twinge in his brain. She had broken through the wall again. He set to shoring up his defenses. “And she’ll be here soon,” he muttered, clutching at his temple.
Azhi started to build up a powerful breath; gold and green and black light streaming from his mouth. At the last second, Ghun grabbed him by the throat, jerking his head aside. Ayane grabbed Henry and dragged him to the ground. Azhi’s breath struck Ghun’s throne and then it was gone, and the bottom half of his statue and all the rooms behind it.
The Ghun statue toppled; Henry and Ayane crawled away as fast as they could to avoid being crushed by its head.
An instant later, Ghun slammed Azhi into the statue. He loomed over the dragon, giggling like a little boy, as the rain ran down his massive form. Each droplet turned gold as it washed away a little bit of his magic, but it hardly mattered. He was bigger than the statue now, and the size of his power was greater still. Ghun brought his head down on Azhi’s chest, over and over, crushing it against the statue’s head like the hand of a wayward child between an anvil and a hammer. Broken scales flew off his body, plinking like tile.
Henry raised his hand, calling Azhi back into his mindspace before he was completely destroyed. And that’s when Leila pounced.
She smashed through his mental defenses, sprinting for the door, and to Henry it seemed as though the door was open to let Azhi back in. As his essence streamed through the door, she pushed through it, like fighting a strong wind, and before Henry could do anything about it, she was through. He felt nauseous for half a moment, and then he threw up.
Liquid metal sprayed out of his mouth for what felt like a full minute, but was definitely much less. As soon as it touched the ground it began to expand and grow.
Ghun chuckled, as he was wont to do, though his voice was deep enough that the sound made Henry’s ears pulse. “Oh Hahn,” he said, his gigantic face smug, crystalline eyes half-lidded. “Are you feeling ill?” Ayane took Henry’s left arm and led him back from Leila as she clad herself in skin. Ghun let them; they were still well within his grasp.
Leila finished pulling herself together, though a dozen janky, metal arms still arched from her back.
“And who are you meant to be?” Ghun asked her.
“I’m the girl that’s going to kill Henry Sinclair,” she replied, looking straight at Henry. Her broken knife slid out of her palm.
Ghun tittered. “Well, by all means.”
She lunged at him. He shot her with the disruptor, leaving a fist sized hole in her head.
And the floor collapsed, dumping them all into the ocean.
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Braehar’s tablet allowed her to override the sigils that made up the portal. Technically, she could change all the parameters of the portal; its physical location in the castle, its orientation and, within reason, size. Ghun had made it himself, and djinni magic is closely tied to the individual, so this had been extremely difficult. Hence the single usage.
She had been watching the battle from the shadow of a doorway with Clody anxiously trembling behind her skirt, both biding her time and trying to figure out how best to use it. In the original plan she’d been meant to drench Ghun with ocean water by moving the portal into the throne room. But things had moved too quickly, and he’d proved himself more powerful than they had guessed, and now there was another enemy combatant.
So, Braehar decided to move the portal under the floor, growing it to the same size and shape of the great hall and leaving just a thin layer of stone above it. Now Ghun’s weight shattered it, like a foolish skater shatters the ice of a pond in early spring and plunges to their death.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Oh no, they’re gonna drown,” said Clody, inching closer to the water. They stretched out their hand to touch and pulled it back instantly.
“Stand ready to rescue Henry and Ayane—” Braehar’s train of thought was cut off as the portal flicker and died, leaving nothing but a rubble strewn floor. She blinked twice. “Scheiße.”
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There was a shock of cold, then darkness, and then suddenly, light, golden light. Ayane’s eyes stung from the salt. Every sensation was heightened. The waking world. It hurt. She could feel her essence sloughing off in the water.
Beside her, Henry fell through the water, grappling with Leila. His dreamsilver hand was around her throat, her extra arms were dwindling away. She stabbed him in the back with her token and Ayane gasped (no bubbles came out. There was no real air in her lungs). The boy and his doppelganger began to glow with an inner light that strobed red and pink, magic cycling between them in a circuit.
But Leila’s skin was fizzing and bubbling, beading off in quicksilver droplets; she couldn’t exist in the waking world for long either. Perhaps she was more resilient than Ayane because of her nature, but Henry was hurting her, and maybe that would be enough to wear her down.
How could Ayane help? Lightning would strike them both. Maybe cold—
A massive hand grabbed her around the waist and dragged through the water. She emerged into the free air and gasped for a breath she did not need, as she came face to face with Ghun Andam’s giant head. She tried to call upon her magic, singing out to call down a burst of lightning. She had no doubt she could have split him in two right now, but here, away from the Dreamlands, it wasn’t coming naturally anymore.
The saltwater dribbled down Ghun’s face, carving crude lines into his stone skin, marring his ever-smiling face into a grimace. The way his magic leached out into the water, it looked like he was on fire. She could feel the energy coming off him, blowing her hair back. With a slow stony grind, he smiled bigger than she’d ever seen, baring teeth hewn from glittering rainbow crystal. “My darling little girl,” he said, “it looks like you’ve made it to the real world after all.”
Ayane sang, straining for magic. Her ajana burned, then dissolved away. Ghun started to squeeze. There was no breath in her, she thought, just somehow it was cutting her off. He lifted her higher, over his head. She could see the sunset on the ocean. “Drink it in,” said Ghun. “Soon, the dream will end. Where will you wake, I wonder? Or will you just become salt and seafoam?”
She was just a dream. An animate thought, a spirit. A tangled skein of magic. Ayane closed her eyes and whistled a single pure note. Her body became lightning. She flew down Ghun’s arm and struck him in the face.
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Henry’s lifeblood was pouring out into the bay, and he knew it. The only thing keeping him alive was the energy he was stealing from Leila, and she was stealing it right back from him. They’d sunk to the bottom of the sea, feet tangling in the kelp. He guessed they were only twenty feet down or so, for which he was grateful. He didn’t know how much that would help. She was dying too, melting in the seawater, her face half a metal skull. He knew he wouldn’t bleed out for several minutes, and wondered if she would melt before he could drown.
She was in his head too, and he was in hers, their mindscapes melting together. It was a chaotic, tangled mess, monsters running back and forth, fighting each other across ever-shifting rooms that unfolded like accordions, filling in turns with water and fire. “Give up,” Leila growled. “Or we’ll both die.”
“I could have said the same thing,” said Henry, baring his teeth.
His eyes were blurring, even as his mindscape became clearer. He thought he saw a wispy thing swimming through the water toward them. It may have been a jellyfish, if not for the fact that it was holding a fistful of glittering crystal that burned gold.
The thing reached him, and he realized it was Ayane. She was thin and translucent, and he knew she was close to death. She held out the burning thing—a piece of Ghun’s flesh!—entreating him to take the fragment in his hand.
Leila’s arm snaked out, sprouting into a dozen, branching limbs like a silver tree that pierced Ayane through the body, swirling her around until she broke up. “No help for you,” she said, stabbing Henry over and over in the mindscape, while in the world of flesh she twisted the knife.
Henry screamed, bubbles shooting from his mouth. He mustered his strength and pushed Leila away, both in the mindscape and in real life. The connection shook, the space between them growing as if he’d tossed her a hundred feet, but her knife was still in his back, so it didn’t even pretend to break. He didn’t care. In the waking world, he reached out and touched the last remaining piece of Ayane, her hand, still grasping the stone, and he absorbed them both.
She appeared in the mindscape as a book on his shelf. It was torn and shredded, and he willed it to be whole, patching it here and there with pieces of himself as he sobbed over the pages. It seemed he had tears left after all.
A spectral image of Ghun rose, snickering, from the floor. I think you might call that an unhealthy attachment, it said, looming over Henry and the book.
Leila charged down the hall at him, limbs stretching out until she was galloping on all fours.
Henry growled at Ghun’s shadow. “You obey me,” he commanded, and his mist hand stretched out to grab his throat. Ghun let out a pained laugh, slowly collapsing down to the floor. “I want no part of you in me,” said Henry. “No figment, just power.”
The shadow transformed all at once into a copy of Henry.
Leila slammed into it, and the second Henry grabbed her and threw her to the ground. They grappled.
Henry was disoriented from being in three places at once and he thought he might be sick again, but he forced himself to keep working. In the waking world, his silver hand was pulsing with power, glowing softly golden. At the center of his palm, where the tip of the token had protruded, was now an eye made of glittering crystal, half obscured with a silver eyelid.
Leila’s body was breaking up, but she had regained her footing. She was losing, he could tell.
Ayane’s book was finished. Henry slammed it shut and kissed the cover, then summoned her back into the real world.
She emerged in a swirl of pink and blue light, looking just as he remembered her, though to his surprise, her robe had turned bright pink. She looked down at herself, then at him, then at Leila. Hurry! She thought, and he heard her.
Take the knife out of my back, said Henry, and Ayane did. The pain was awful, and it distracted him enough that Leila tore his duplicate apart in the dreamspace. Ayane handed him the token, and he clutched it in his cursed hand, briefly marveling at the long awaited completion of his quest.
He absorbed the knife. Leila’s physical body disappeared in a swirl of bubbles.
Henry’s mindscape exploded.
It was impossible, for a moment, to separate Leila from himself. They had been the same person for most of their lives, and the rooms of their memories intermingled, mirrored opposites, and neither could tell which belonged to whom.
Then there were the monsters, running rampant through his memory, tearing up childhood birthday parties, turning happiness into trauma, killing him over and over all across his life. Even now, Leila was trying to eat him.
But Henry was stronger now, at last strong enough to stop her. Slowly he sorted everything out, filling holes and ordering events, putting new books on shelves. Leila and everything she was, he confined in a book. It was thick, bloated, pulsing.
Henry couldn’t hold it. She was too strong, even now. It was taking all his effort to hold her down. What could he do?
He was vaguely aware that in this time his body had grown quite still. The brawl underwater had taken just a few seconds, but he was hurt and out of breath. Ayane had pulled him to the surface and dragged him to the shore, laying him on the sand. He blinked himself awake. “Hey,” he muttered.
“Hey,” she replied. “Are you alright? Are you going to die?”
Henry dug his left hand into the sand. His right hand, he held up to the sun. Ghun’s eye stared back at him from his palm. “I don’t think so,” he muttered.
“Good,” said Ayane. Then she smacked his arm. “I didn’t want to be bound to you like this,” she said.
Henry closed his eyes. Leila’s book shuddered. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Ayane took a deep, shuddering sigh. “What am I now?”
“My familiar, I think,” said Henry. The book started to rattle.
After a pause, Ayane said, “Don’t presume to order me around. I’m not your pet, or your lover. I come and go as I please.”
“Of course,” said Henry. He tried to straighten up but his back twinged and he fell back onto the bloody sand. “I wouldn’t dream of treating you like that.”
Ayane narrowed her eyes at him. “Was that fucking wordplay?”
“No,” he said, snickering. “Unless, you wanted it to be?”
“No,” she replied.
A mound of dirt rose up from the wet sand some feet down toward the water. Ayane tensed. “What is that?”
Henry winced and forced the sand around him into a huge hand, pushing himself into a sit. The mound of sand was at the tideline, and it too was growing. Soon it loomed over him and Ayane, and the wet sand started to break off in chunks.
“Oh no,” Ayane muttered.
Ghun’s distorted laugh filled the air as the sand all flew off at once. Henry gasped. The djinn was in a terrible state, yes. Burned and cracked all over, his metal clothes torn and melted to his skin. His many wounds bled a black, tar-like blood. But the worst of it was his head. Ayane’s strike had blasted off his whole face. There wasn’t a single trace of it left, just a jagged-edged crater deep enough for Henry to put his arm up to the elbow. The entire inside of Ghun’s head was full of iridescent crystals, the same make as his eyes. Somehow he was still laughing, and the whole picture put Henry in mind of a massive mouth full of crystalline teeth. It reminded him of Leila.
“Enjoying the seaside, little lovebirds?” Ghun asked, voice cracked and distorted. stumbling toward them. He gripped the metal cloth around his knees and lifted it up to walk through the sand, exposing his jeweled slippers. Henry almost thought it was funny how they seemed completely unharmed. “I think you’ve killed me,” he said. “But I’ll be taking you with me. Let’s explore the afterlife together, eh? Me and my favorite characters. Call it Ghun and Friends Go To Hell.”
Clumps of sand rose into the air around him, and they quickly compressed down, heating into molten glass in the shape of arrowheads.
Ayane made to stand, but Henry grabbed her wrist. “We can take him,” she muttered.
“Just hold on,” he whispered back. Sigils formed down the length of his right arm, a hundred curses invoking a hundred demons, gods, angels and saints. In the dreamspace, he placed his right arm on Leila’s book.
Ayane took him literally and grabbed his arm. He winced, but it wasn’t dangerous, not to her. “Help me aim.” His fingers formed the disruptor barrel.
“What’s this? A duel?” Ghun asked. “Well that’s even more fun.” With a chuckle, he made a finger gun. The arrowheads stiffened up, ready to fly. “Bang!”
Henry opened Leila’s book, channeling her power through his spectral arm into the waking world.
Leila had no magic of her own. She knew everything he knew, but her power came from stolen energy. From nightmares. And now, he was letting them out.
They sprayed out of his hand, compressed into a stream of black by his curse. Ghun’s arrowheads were blown out of the air and the stream of darkness hit him in the chest. Crawling arms and teeth grasped at him, scratched and bit him, a thousand limbs leaving a thousand cuts, whittling him away. They were as insubstantial as smoke, but the pressure was enough to keep him away, try as he might to fight against them.
It was almost like the Black Wind.
The last dregs of power left Henry’s fingertips in a big burst of black. It slammed into Ghun and carried him away into the ocean. He laughed as he fell apart and sank into the waves.
Henry slammed shut Leila's book just as one last piece of stolen power trailed from her, almost flung out into the void. Henry caught it in his spectral hand. It was warm and bright, not a nightmare at all, and Henry knew it was Ruby’s avatar. He snatched it back into himself, embracing her quickly. She was battered and small, barely able to give him a grateful look before she collapsed into a book. He smiled to himself. He’d lost Desert Reign, but soon he’d give Ruby back a book after all.
He put Leila—just Leila—on the shelf, far from Ruby. He heard her crying distantly, and wondered if she could truly die.
He tried to return to his body, and felt himself unable to move. It may have been the thrill of battle leaving him, or it may have been that he was finally back in the waking world and his year of restlessness was finally catching up to him, but his dreamscape was fading into blackness. Henry fell into the deepest part of sleep, in which there are no dreams.
Some time later, Henry awoke in his bedroom. He wondered if he was dreaming or awake, because his aunt was there, asleep in his cushioned chair, and he had not dreamed of her once in all the time he was gone. But Leila was also there, curled up in the corner by the window, almost concealed by the bright rays streaming in. He realized at once that his mindspace was overlaying the real world when he noticed how slowly his aunt was breathing.
Leila stood up, eyes burning and jaw clenched defiantly, though most of her face was obscured by her scraggly black hair. “Why’d you want to come back here so badly?” she said.
Henry blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
“We have the same memories. You should understand that she’s just been using you this whole time, molding you to be whatever she wants you to be,” she started pacing the floor. “And as bad as she is, the rest of them are worse. The Achlydes don’t want you to know our father’s name, and they won’t tell you how our mother died. You know they did it, right?”
“Yeah,” Henry breathed. “I know. But it’s home.”
He must have said it aloud, because Morgause stirred, eyes fluttering open. She stifled a small yawn, and said “good morning, Henry.” Leila screamed and went back to the corner to sulk.
“Good morning Auntie,” he said, lifting his cursed arm. It felt very heavy in the real world, and it hurt more. “I did it.”
Leila rushed over to his bedside. “Pathetic,” she hissed.
“Where’s Ayane?” Henry asked. “And Ruby?’
“Ruby is at school,” said Morgause. “I haven’t told her you’re back yet. She would have been fretting. Who is Ayane?”
“Ayane is—Ruby’s at school?”
“We have a lot to discuss,” said Morgause.
“I’ll tell you everything,” said Henry. He took a deep breath and told his story. He did not tell her everything. He left out his thoughts and feelings, and much of the help he’d gotten along the way. It was obvious to see all the ways he’d been hurt, but he downplayed his pain. He knew his aunt would give sympathy, but with it would come lectures, telling him what he should have done, and what he’d failed to do.
Ultimately, his quest had been something of a failure. He’d been given a time limit of six days and came back a year later, missed his entire freshman year of high school.
To his surprise, his aunt hugged him, held him, stroked his hair. He almost broke down again, but held firm. He couldn’t do it with Leila standing there, pulling faces at him. What to do about her? He had an idea.
“Get some rest,” was all Morgause had to say. “There are things that have happened, things you must know. But they can wait until tomorrow.” She stood up and walked out the door, looking back at Henry forlornly. Her red eyes were sparkling, perhaps with tears. Then she went through the door, closing it with a soft click.
Leila ran up to Henry and stabbed him. She brought the knife down over and over, until the sheets were stained red with his lifeblood. She punctured both his lungs, so he could not scream. With every puncture she grew stronger and more solid, and he became weaker and less substantial. At last, she slashed his throat, and an instant later he crumbled to nothing, like flash paper held to a candle.
She dropped the knife, staring at her hands, more solid and real than ever before. Laughing, Leila approached the door, smashing it down with a flex of power, and went out into the house, ready to kill the rest of the Achlydes.
Henry put down his pen and closed his book. His journal had been left behind in Desert Reign but he had a few blank sketchbooks in his room. He wrote the physical story in the waking world, and copied it into his dreamscape at the same time, not in the book that held his memories, but in the book that held Leila’s. And then, when he was done, he twisted her book inside out, so the last page turned directly onto the first.
“Pretty clever,” said Ayane from her perch on his dresser. She was kicking her feet, playing with a rubik’s cube. She had no ambition of solving it and was just enjoying the way it made new patterns, and how it felt in her hands. “How long do you think it will last?” She’d been there the whole time, though Henry had written her out of the scene. Leila would feel more confident if she thought she’d dragged the truth out of Henry on her own.
“Not long,” said Henry. “I don’t want to try to do the dream math. Maybe a few months.”
“You should just shred her book, like Ordog's," said Ayane.
“I should,” said Henry, rubbing his temple with a pained wince. “But my brain is too battered and bruised right now. If I tried it in this state, she’d get out again.”
“When you’ve recovered enough, will you do it then?” asked Ayane, looking up from her puzzle. One of her storm-blue eyes had turned pink. Henry knew one of his own had turned blue.
“I don’t think so,” said Henry. “I might be able to use her. In the future.”
Ayane scoffed. “It’s a bad idea.”
“I have time to think about it.”
“Don’t take too long.”