Blake channeled another 10% of his mana into Mental Influence as he tried to ease Annie to sleep.

"If…if I could just use Hollow Soul," she said, wiping at her eyes. "I'd fall asleep right away. I think it’s working again. It makes it all just..."

"No," Blake said for the third or fourth time. "I can't help you when you use it. And you can't rely on it to get you through life. It's supposed to be for combat, Annie. Temporary. Now close your eyes and try to sleep."

Annie nodded and turned on her side in the big bed Blake had made for her. They were alone in her bedroom in their wing of the White Tower, Blake's mana drained to a good 60% just trying to get her comfortable enough to sleep. He was tempted to get Seul-ki, but Annie was more comfortable when they were alone.

His 'plan', such as it was, involved Dream Walking into her mind to help ease the horrors of the things she'd faced in the tutorial, and maybe help her grow strong enough to face them. He figured if he could build her up from the worst moments, then maybe she could slowly manage to face the rest. He wanted to ease her into it as best he could, though he wasn't sure how that would go.

His control with Dreamwalk was...incomplete. He could create things, move around, even suggest things that might alter the person's dream. But he wasn't in control. At least not yet.

It was probably 3am by the time Blake felt Annie's breathing finally steady. He slapped himself awake and took a deep breath. Now or never. And he'd recovered most of his mana Meditating. He leaned forward and activated Dreamwalk, holding his Mana Gem in one hand just in case.

The jump in perception was disorienting as always. A blank canvass of night swallowed him, shuffling him down to somewhere in Annie's mind like an escalator in space. He could still 'feel' his body like some vivid sensory memory, even seeing it as an image in his mind. All he had to do was focus and he'd vanish from the dream world and open his real eyes.

But for now he descended, closer and closer to the Otherness of Annie's mind. He could already hear the screaming.

There was a reason, after all, the poor girl didn't want to sleep. As far as Blake could tell, she dreamt nightly of her tutorial, or possibly some overblown, dramatic recreation of it that changed and warped over time.

He found her in a small, sci-fi looking bedroom on a cot, her hands over her ears, humming to herself.

"I can't go out there," she said when she saw him. "I'm safe if I stay in here."

From previous experience, Blake knew Annie's tutorial trauma really came in two parts.

The first was her own terror—hiding from the orcs and whatever else the system had sent to slaughter/challenge the graduating 'students' as a welcome into the game. The second was her own guilt for that hiding—for not doing more to help her friends, despite being a player capable of fighting back.

Blake had the impression she'd hidden just as she did now as the slaughter began. It was only later that she'd summoned the courage to go out, to pick up a fireman's axe from somewhere in a hall.

"You have to go out now, Annie," he said, and the girl's eyes widened in horror. She shook as she stared. "If you don't go out, this is never going to end."

She went back to humming, and Blake sent her a good dose of courage with Mental Influence. It took a minute, but she finally took her hands down and gave him an excited smile.

"I could use my power. It makes it all go away. If I did that, I could do it."

"You can’t," he said. "You can't just use it forever to solve all your problems."

"Why?" she pleaded more than asked.

Something about this sweet, innocent girl broke Blake's heart. He wasn’t sure why he cared so much—cared beyond making her useful to him, useful to his cause. But he slowly realized: Annie wasn't so different than he was as a little boy.

When he first came to the orphanage he'd brought his fair share of trauma. He didn’t remember everything, but he knew his parents had been addicts and…unkind. He’d eventually run away. Picked up by some police officer and delivered to social services. Never identified. Never claimed.

The dark, alien spaces and other children of the orphanage had terrified him, and he'd cried most nights. But he smiled as he thought of meeting Mason. How everything changed.

"The way to deal with pain isn’t numbness, Annie," he said. "You can't run. And you can’t make heavy things light. All you can do is get stronger."

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“How?" she whispered, staring into his eyes. He looked at the door of the bedroom.

"You face your fear. I want you to fight. To see you're stronger now. You aren't some helpless child anymore."

"I can’t," she said. "It's too hard. It’s the same."

He saw himself in her eyes, then—terrified of the other boys in the orphanage, a nasty little pack that had stolen everything he'd had left in the world, including a stuffed bear his mother had given him. One of the only things. In his mind he saw a six year old Mason asking him why he didn't just fight back.

"I can't," he'd said, just like Annie, tears in his eyes. "There's too many. They're too big."

Mason had hopped off the bed without a word. He’d walked up to the grinning pack of boys alone as they all stared and smiled. Then he’d punched the biggest kid in the face. Half had run, half had fought. Eventually Mason came back bloody. But he came back holding the bear.

Blake would remember it until the day he died.

"I never said you had to do it alone," he said, meeting Annie's eyes as he smiled. With True Making he formed an axe that looked vaguely like Annie's new monstrosity, and a bundle of spears for himself.

"We're going to go out there," he said. "And we're going to stop every one of those bastards who comes at us. Because we're heroes, and that's what heroes do."

"I'm not a hero," Annie said, tears flowing from her pretty eyes. "I'm just a girl. And I wanted to be a civilian, but the game wouldn't let me. It made us take these tests, and gave me player. I didn't even get to choose."

"You'd be dead now if it hadn't," Blake said. "You'd never have made it out of that school. We don't get to choose everything." He held up the axe. "But some things we do."

Annie took deep, gasping breaths as she stared at the weapon, face scrunching as she fought desperate sobs. Then she reached out and snatched it.

* * *

Blake walked beside Annie holding his spears, trying not to flinch at the sounds of screams, or the flares of light from outside the windows.

"We have to get to the wall," Annie said, voice strained. "Once we're out of the school, there's a wall all around it. But it's not too high to climb."

Blake said nothing, ready to fight, but wanting Annie to decide where and how they went. She led them onward until they found an orc on top of a young girl in the middle of the hall. Blake thought it was trying to rape her until he realized: it was eating her.

It looked up with red eyes, face bloody as it growled. Annie screamed and charged.

Blake was ready to intervene, but it turned out to be…unnecessary. The creature stood and lifted a knife, weaving as if to trick Annie into swiping her axe in the wrong direction. Instead she went low and swept out the creature's legs.

It went to the ground howling, one leg snapped and half severed at the knee. Annie hacked into it with a brutal overhand chop, silencing it in a single blow. She stood there panting, looking up at the ceiling.

"She was my friend," she said, voice cracking, not looking. "We were in almost every class together. When I was hiding, I heard her screaming. I knew it was her."

"I'm sorry, Annie," Blake said quietly. "I'm sure she would want you to escape. To live."

They moved on and found more green skinned creatures at the end of the hall. As Blake really looked at them he decided they weren't the same as the tower orcs. They were more…feral, somehow, less human looking. They were covered in paint and had fingernails more like claws, their teeth all sharp like a goblin's. He wished he'd had Navi there to do some inspecting.

Then Annie was screaming again, charging more of the creatures, and Blake decided it was time to help. He lifted two spears with Telekinesis, loosing them simultaneously as two of the creatures tried to attack Annie's flanks. How it was all working in a dreamworld he had no idea, but thought it best not to ask too many questions.

In a few moments they were all dead—hacked down or pinned to the walls with spears. Blake made himself a couple more.

Things were pure chaos outside the school. Other teenagers were fighting out here, some with stolen knives, others with their fists or random objects they'd found in the halls. Annie rushed to help them.

Blake mostly just followed her and watched her back, skewering anything that tried to intervene. He expected their 'success' here was irrelevant. He just hoped the act of doing it was going to make it easier for Annie to return—that if she faced the horror enough times it would lose its power over her. At least that was his theory.

By the time they reached the wall, the teenager looked much as she had when he'd first met her.

Little Red Annie, he thought, seeing the red head covered neck to knees in monstrous blood.

"We're out," she said, hand moving up the rough stone. "There was a gate, too. But there were too many creatures." She shook her head. "If…if I'd gathered the others. Maybe together we could of...I didn't even try. I just climbed the wall. I ran away. I don't know if any of them made it."

She looked at Blake as if he might chastise her. As if he might say 'yes, you could have, but it's too late now.'

"You're a good person, Annie," he said. "I would have run. And I wouldn't have thought about them twice."

"That's not true," she whispered.

Blake stepped closer until she met his eyes. He took the piece of himself that truly cared for Annie and locked it in his Mental Partition, so he could tell her the absolute truth. And maybe keep away the infatuation he sometimes sensed.

"I'd have left you, and your friend. I would have done anything, whatever I had to. Because that's what most of us are. But not you. You're kind, and gentle, and this awful world hurts you. So you need to put that sweet girl here," he gestured to her heart. "Hide her away and forgive her. Then let a different kind of girl take charge for awhile."

Tears ran down Annie's face. Blake wanted to take her hand, but didn’t.

"Do you want me to wake you up?"

"No," she said, clenching her jaw. "I need to sleep, and...I'm OK now." She smiled a little. "Thank you. For helping me. It's fine after I get away. The woods…they’re nice. I'm OK now."

Blake nodded, focusing on the real world and his body outside. He vanished from the nightmare of Annie's mind, blinking back to consciousness in the gloom.

He looked down at the young girl, seeming to sleep so peacefully in her big bed, her mind so busy. He pushed some hair out of her face, trying not to look at her beauty, her innocence, anything else...

He wanted to look at her only as a soldier in his army. But it seemed his still recovering Mental Partition could only do so much.