Albert stood besides Alice. She had clearly seen him walk away with the kids, or rather, kits as he called them, but she’d never seen him get back.
“She gave you something.” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. She gave me… a seed? I’ve never seen the like though.” and she showed him Wax’s gift.
Albert inclined his head, not making a move to reach out and take the gift in his hands to examine it, and sighed.
“Why Wax? Why?”
He looked up at her and nodded: “Well, what’s done is done. Treasure this gift Garda. It is… precious beyond measure.”
Under the mask, Alice’ eyebrows rose and she couldn’t contain herself as she asked:
“Really? Like, I understand it’s a gift, and all gifts are good, I’m not saying it isn’t, but how can a seed be precious beyond measure?”
Albert didn’t answer immediately. Instead he looked up at the kids as they got ready for the hunt. Then:
“Wax is… damaged. Broken. You have to understand one thing Garda: I know none of these children personally, in the waking world. I found them in the Dream the same way I found you. But Wax… I found her on the other side. A little girl, abandoned, mistreated by her once parents, beaten and bleeding. The worst part is, she believed what her parents told her, that it was her fault whatever happened. I took her in, but that part of her never changed.
“I decided to bring her to the Land of Dreams in the hope I could, for lack of a better word, fix her. Make her understand that she wasn’t the cause of everything that had happened to her and her old family. Instead, she found a way to… cure herself. To excise those parts of herself that she deems are the cause of her problem.
“What she just gave you, that little seed. That’s part of her, of her mind and soul. I don’t want to know what she had to get rid of to give you that. So, for her sake, please, take care of that gift. Don’t let it go to waste.”
At that, Alice closed her hand around the seed protectively, as if she was holding a child. And, in truth, she was. Sure, it was only a part, but it came from a child nonetheless.
…
And now for some reason the image of a dismembered child appeared in her head, because thanks brain, you always know how to make me feel bad!
She put the seed gently in a pocket of her clothes, making sure to close the button on it, before remembering this was a dream and turning the button in a zip. She was not going to lose this like the kid from Polar Express kept doing with his ticket.
A few minutes later, all the kits (goddamn the nickname’s stuck!) were ready and raring to go.
“Now remember kids, this hunt is training. I don’t want any of you to be heroes, alright? Because what happens to [Heroes]?”
“They die in atrocious pain!” answered all the kids in a chorus.
“Great! Always help each other and don’t fear asking for help from me, understood? I’ll always be there if things get out of hand!”
“Yes Papa Fox!” was the answer he got.
“Very well! Then, let’s go kick some nightmare ass!”
Albert snapped his fingers and the platform they were on began to rise as the children cheered in a cute warcry.
Alice couldn’t help but smile at this. It really was a sort of game, eh?
“Now, while we go there, Garda, I want you to pick a few plants from the Dream.”
Whispered to her Albert.
“What plants?”
“Any that strike your fancy. You say your passion is gardening. That means you should know a lot about plants and their applications. I want you to learn to weaponize them in the Dream. We’ll concentrate on other applications after you learn that, understood?”
Alice stopped for a moment, thinking about it, then shrugged.
“Sure. You probably know best.”
“Don’t be so sure about that Garda. The Dream is as unpredictable as a child having a tantrum. You think you’ve seen the child do its worst, until you haven’t.”
And then they were back on the surface, the strange sun still setting, because that’s how it worked in the Land apparently.
“Green Bird, tell me, where can you feel a Nightmare?”
Asked Albert, turning towards the little girl wearing green. Who, in turn, began staring around aimlessly. Alice didn’t know how she could find something, anything, around here. They were in a clearing and, around them, only trees awaited.
Still the girl looked and, after a moment, Alice heard her whisper something:
“[Sense Darkness].”
A few seconds later, she turned to her right and pointed.
“That way!”
Albert looked in that direction and, after a moment, nodded.
“That is right. Next time though try not to use your Skill, understand?”
“Yes Papa.”
They began walking, Albert swiftly moving in front of them. As he passed by Green Bird’s side he ruffled her hair in approval.
Alice reached him a moment later and asked the obvious question: “Why [Sense Darkness]?”
To which, Albert turned towards her and began staring as if trying to ask her: Really?
“One would think you never slept, or dreamed, all your life Garda. Nightmares are creatures of the dark, things made of regrets and hate and fear. And there’s nothing darker than those emotions.
“The Dream may be large, and it may have a lot of dark places, but nothing compares to the sheer amount of it contained even in the smallest Nightmare.”
She nodded. Then he motioned for her to start looking around, and she did.
They were in a forest, which meant there were lots of trees and ferns and moss (which didn’t seem to follow the typical tradition of growing only towards the north. probably because there was no such thing as north in the Dream), and many smaller flowers and plants, but in the beginning there was nothing around her that seemed even remotely useful.
Then they began going deeper, darkness slowly covering everything.
And she found the first interesting plant in her journey.
It was Male Fern. Its leaves were a dark green and lance shaped, tapering at the base, growing in thick clumps around the central stem. Many grew in the small clearing covered by the trees, letting in some light, but not too much, because that plant preferred dark environs.
She smiled as she remembered her granny’s words. She was a herbalist, one that followed old traditions. Which led to her getting the nicknamed ‘The Verdant Witch’ by all of her neighbors. She knew what felt like hundreds of plants, with all their applications and preferred environments of growth and, most important of all in her opinion, the right times to harvest them, together with the incantations.
When she’d been little, Alice loved spending time with her grandma. She always had a kind smile on her face, even when she did something wrong. Especially when she did something wrong actually. She would just smile, laugh about how she used to do worse in her youth, then proceed to pinch and tug her ears.
Never anger the granny.
Anyways, the old woman would spend more time in her gardens and out in the wild than she did home, and obviously she always brought Alice along.
Worst case scenario, you stretch your legs and breathe good air. Best case scenario you even learn something, she would always say.
Fern was, truth be told, a very common plant, but it did have a lot of applications, even in modern herboristerie. It could help with inflammations, it was an astringent and a febrifugal, together with two or three other properties she couldn’t quite remember. But then came the more… esoteric side of grandma’s knowledge.
For example, male fern could be used, when cooked in wine, unblock obstructions of the spleen, cure melancholy (because that’s how grandma called depression apparently) and even be used to cause menstruation. And then there was one last application that was really of interest to her: when made into an amulet, male fern could act as a dispeller of nightmares, among other things.
It felt… oddly convenient, in many ways.
Now, Alice didn’t know for sure if any of the things grandma said about plants could be considered true. She had studied pharmacy, was nearly ready to graduate actually, yet she’d never once studied any of these things.
But then again, grandma had always said that the world had been forgetting for too long, and this world seemed… right. Even ripe for such things.
“That one could be useful.”
Albert looked at the plant she was pointing at and looked confused:
“That’s… just fern.”
“Male fern, there’s a distinction. Traditions say that plant can keep nightmares at bayIt’s especially powerful when harvested under the, well, you could call it blessing, of Saturn, when Sagittarius is…”
And then she stopped, remembering that she was in another world and was probably talking utter nonsense.
She turned around, and saw Albert staring blankly at her together with the kids.
“What are you talking about,” he asked cautiously, “Because never in my definitely not long life heard about these… Zaturn? Sagitta-something?”
Well fuck Alice, time to find a scapegoat.
“Oh, you know, it’s just how people call planets and constellations where I come from. You probably know them by a different name.” she tried to act nonchalant, while inside she was panicking. With all of her force of will she clamped down on her mind and ordered nothing to come out.
She failed, naturally, as something appeared over her head, but it was clouded, covered, so really all the kits saw was a cloud form over Alice’s head.
Cloud that disappeared the moment Albert said: “I-I’m sorry dear, but what are planets? And constellations.”
And then the cloud disappeared a bright red sign was now visible over Alice’s head, reading ‘LIAR!’ in big, capital, letters
Fuck!
“Well, you know, planets, those big ol’ rocks in the sky, usually spherical… you know, those. And constellations are just arbitrary figures the stars seem to form if you connect them like dots. That… that stuff.”
She was sweating profusely.
And Albert only made it worse as he said: “Garda, dear, there’s no such things as rocks in the sky. Astronomers looked up at the sky to try and study stars, and they never saw anything like these… planets, you talk about. And why would they be there anyways? To block the Stars from looking at us? That wouldn’t make any sense.
“As for constellations, I’d love to see someone try something like that when the Stars sometimes change places.”
Oh god I’m completely fucked.
So she did the one thing any and all teenagers and young adults do when they’re in a bad situation and don’t want to talk about it: she changed the subject.
“Anyways! So yeah, real cool plant, amirite? Now just gimme a min’ to harvest some and get us all cute lil amulets to help with the nightmares!”
She spoke so fast she would actually be surprised if anyone understood even a single word about what she’d just said.
Still, she looked down at the fern and, after a moment, realized she had absolutely nothing on her persona to help her gather the plant, not even a knife.
“Anyone got something sharp to cut this up?” she asked, turning hopefully to Albert and the kits.
Who, in turn, were still staring at her as if she’d come from outer space. Or hadn’t, because apparently there were no planets out there! Yey! So they probably stared at her as if she came from another world. Which she did!
“…Care to explain?” asked Albert.
She smacked her lips: “Nope!”
“You do know you won’t be able to escape the questions forever, right? Sooner or later you’ll say something really strange to the wrong person and that will cause you lots or problems.”
“Try me! I’m a good runner. And I won’t be making the same mistake again.”
Albert stayed silent for a moment, then shrugged: “I’ll give you the time and space you need, but you really ought to tell someone. Not necessarily me, naturally. Anyone you trust. But there are old stories around the world, around the Game. I heard some of them in my time. And they’re not always pretty.”
Alice shivered. Then shook her head: “Now’s not the time.”
To which Albert nodded. Then, as if nothing had happened, he turned towards the kits and clapped his hands: “Sailor, give her your sword please.”
“But it’s my sword!”
“Come on Sailor,” he coaxed the boy, extending his hand, “You know she’d not going to steal it. And if she does, I can stop her.”
At this point Alice raised her hand: “You do realize I’m still here, right? And I’d probably manage to fail at stealing a kid’s candy, by the way.”
That got a chuckle out of Green, Dancer and Knight, while the other smaller kids just looked at the whole conversation as if the speakers were all madmen. When had she gotten so good at reading their masks?
In the end, Sailor sighed and handed over his wooden sword. As he did, he whispered: “[Sharper Than It Looks]. Be careful now.”
Alice took the child-sized sword, more of a short sword for her, in her hand, and was pleased by how light it felt in her grip. She crouched on the ground and, ever so gently, began taking cuttings from the fern. Leaves fell under her, creating a small mound on the ground as she worked and talked:
“Traditionally all cuttings should be taken using a sickle. If you want to be even more of a traditionalist, the blade should be forged out of silver, or at least covered in it, because silver purifies and kills malignant influences upon the plant.”
Except for anything related to planets and the constellation currently ascending. But that’s not a problem here because we have none of those. Of god there are no planets. And the stars move around. And the moon melts. What fucked up world am I in?
“Naturally, not all plants require this much care during the harvest. Nightshade, or Belladonna if you prefer, leaves can just be plucked from the plant, whereas Hellebore can go as far as requiring an incantation be pronounced during a specific time of night for its effects to appear. I should probably plant some now that I think about it.”
She kept on blabbering on as she gave the wooden sword back to Sailor and began weaving together the fern leaves she’d cut off.
“Of course, most of these things are, as I said, just traditions. Beliefs people have about how things should be done. They don’t actually influence how well things work. But we’re in the Land of Dreams, and you said that beliefs here hold more power than physics, so I tell myself ‘A… Garda, if that’s how it works, then you may as well try to do it following the old ways, as granny called them’. So here I am, and I’m probably boring you all.”
She finished the bracelet she’d been working on and handed it to Wax.
“For you.”
But Albert stopped her and shook his head: “This is the way you alter the Dream, Garda. You shouldn’t try to alter other people’s way of seeing the Dream with your own in the beginning. It could be detrimental to you and others.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, by giving the bracelet to Wax, she could alter the belief you put in it with her own, subvert the effect or outright cancel it. Either way, it won’t help her. I’m sorry, Wax.”
The girl nodded and looked down, scuffing her foot on the ground.
Seeing this, Alice mentally flipped off Albert, rose to her feet, and gently put the bracelet in the girl’s hand: “Don’t listen to Fox Face here, Wax. This is a gift. Do with it whatever you want, ok? It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have a practical effect.”
She turned around, glowering at Albert, who in turn sighed, then shrugged and chuckled softly.
“Who am I to put myself between a woman and a gift?”
Wax looked up at her with big eyes, then nodded and curled her hand around the little bracelet. Moments later, before Alice could begin to panic because she couldn’t put it on, she looked down and saw the little girl’s hand shrink and pass through the bracelet, before going back to normal. She batted her eyes, then just smiled and didn’t think more of it. After all, it wasn’t the strangest thing she’d heard or seen up until now.
Five minutes later, she too had a small bracelet of fern around her wrist, and they began walking again.
“How do I know if it worked?” she asked Albert.
“By testing it out. You did things your way, followed your own traditions and beliefs, and the Dream seemed to accept them, seeing how it didn’t change around you as you braided that little thing. Maybe it’ll work, but there’s no way of knowing for sure until we get in the thick of it.
“Point is, you found a way to protect yourself. Which would be extremely good in and of itself, even rare actually, but if there’s one thing I learned in my life it’s that no shield is unbreakable. Now you have a shield. All you need is a sword, a weapon. Something to actually hurt a Nightmare.”
Silence fell on them again as Alice thought about any plant that could actually help her. Problem was, she knew a lot of those, and many had a use that could help in preventing nightmares, like chamomile or thyme or even lavender. But they only kept the things at bay: they didn’t fight off the malicious entities. So how could she do it?
Maybe I’m thinking about this all wrong. I’m a pharmacist at heart, a gardener and herbalist only in my free time. So how would I go about it as a pharmacist?
I have to make a drug to fend off a disease, the nightmare, but I cannot ‘bombard’ it directly or… something bad will happen. I have drugs that can keep the disease controlled, but they won’t sooner or later the body will become inured to it. While I can cover it up, though, what’s the best alternative?
The answer, when she thought about it in these terms, was quite simple:
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A vaccine. I have to create a friggin’ vaccine! FUCK YOU ANTIVAXXERS, MODERN MEDICINE WINS AGAIN!
Now, to translate this in dream terms. I cannot make an actual vaccine here, can I? No, Albert probably wouldn’t give me the time to test it when there’s an easier and faster solution. So what should I do?
Behind her Dancer chuckled and said: “She’s overthinking it. Just look at her.”
“Maybe we should give her a tip.” suggested Knight.
“Yeah, you’re right.” agreed Albert.
He sidled up to Alice and said: “Garda, you’re in the Land of Dreams. I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but things here don’t necessarily make sense. Imagine it like a two-sided coin where the sides can change places.”
“But never seven!” shouted back Starlight.
“Yeah, what she said.” nodded Albert.
Alice’s mind went into a standstill as she elaborated what she’d just been told.
Two sides of the same coin.
What was the coin though? And which were the sides.
Well, obviously the coin was her phantomatic vaccine. And what did a vaccine do? It helped immunize the person against a disease. Let the body get used to it.
Wait, Eureka!
…
I always wanted to say that! Take that one off the bucket list brain.
Over her head a bucket covered in writing in the form of a list appeared, a pen scratching away at the sentence ‘Say Eureka after actually realizing something important.’
The kits chuckled.
The coin is the vaccine, one side is the patient, and the other is the disease!
If I turn things around, then… abso-fucking-lutely obvious! What if I vaccinate the disease directly? With something that would normally help it grow! Overfeed the bastard until it explodes!
“I need a river! Right now!” she shouted.
Everyone stopped in their tracks.
Then Albert pointed right in front of them and, sure enough, there was a river. Exactly where moments before there had been nothing.
She didn’t question it: she ran towards it. Because she had remembered a story her grandma used to tell about a very bad plant.
Hemlock. In particular, Poison Hemlock. Otherwise known as Cicuta. Or known to her granny as Nightmare Hemlock.
That one’s bad, little Alice. Touch it, it’ll kill you. Breath it, it’ll kill you. Drink it, it’ll kill you. They should burn them all, but the smoke would probably kill someone.
It was an extremely poisonous plant, as that memory had reminded her. Sure, it could have some medical applications, but nobody bothered since there were far less dangerous plants that could do hemlock’s same work. But her grandmother also used to say this:
If you want to have a nightmare, or give someone one, just place a cutting of hemlock under their pillow. Their dreams will be the worst ones they’ve ever had
She’d looked it up online once, but never found anything about that last part. It was just something her grandma used to say, completely unfounded unlike everything else.
Yet here she was, following up on that idea.
She reached the riverbank, and spotted her prize immediately: there, small white flowers blooming in umbels, lay a big cluster of the beautiful plants.
The desire to touch them was overwhelming, kept under control only by the knowledge that it would seriously hurt her.
Or would it? It’s the Dream after all. Nothing can really hurt me. I could try it. Taste it. Brew it. See what happens. Wouldn’t that be beautiful? A beautiful ending, made only slightly bitter by the lack of an actual death.
Alice squashed those intrusive thoughts back in a corner of her mind. They weren’t supposed to be there. The psychologist had helped on that front, but now she wasn’t there, and her life had become so much stranger than the one she used to have in Cambridge.
“I need scissors. Iron. Rusted if you have them.” she spoke to nobody in particular, still staring at the plant, resisting.
A hand landed right on her shoulder and Albert appeared, his head comically moving forward right besides her own.
He looked down at the hemlock, then back up at her, then back again at the plant, and back up at her.
“The list of things you have to tell me is only getting longer dear. But first: why rusted?”
She shook her head, then answered: “This is Hemlock. Poison Hemlock. My grandma called it Nightmare Hemlock, because it gives people nightmares. It’s not a good plant per se, and its effects are all negative, so I presumed that using something rusted, something undesired, would make them worse.”
Albert nodded. Then stopped: “Wait, you want to fight a nightmare by feeding it something that causes nightmares?”
“Well, not really feed so much as overfeed.”
Albert looked speechless. Then he laughed.
“Well, that’s one Airm of a reverse side.” he laughed.
He opened his hand and held out a pair of scissors in pristine condition.
“Sorry, not rusted, that’s the best I can give you.”
“Why can’t you? You, like, make things appear out of nowhere? I’m pretty sure that river wasn’t there a minute ago.”
“Bah, the river doesn’t matter. It’s just water with plants around it. The scissors you want have significance to you and you alone. You must alter them yourself to what you desire. I gave you the base material, you’ll give it the extra push. One day you’ll learn to alter the Dream as much as I can.”
Alice nodded and took the offered scissors in her left hand.
Then, before she began cutting, she ripped a strip of her long shirt and used it to cover her mouth and nose. The other hand she made sure to hide deep in her sleeve.
Then she looked at the scissors. She imagined them covered in brown rust, unused for a long time. She looked. And they didn’t change.
Because that’s not really what I need, she chastised herself.
So she tried to change her perspective. Instead of them just being covered in rust, she looked at them the same way she would look at something unused, forgotten, undesired. Something revolting, that one would never use in their right mind, much less hold. She saw them as harbingers of tetanus!
But she also saw them as something that still remembered its original function. Still sharp, even after years left in a dark, damp, place.
And as she saw all these things, the scissors changed. No longer was she holding pristine metal, no, now there was only an old pair of scissors covered in rust, the metallic disease having eaten through most of the handle and the blade. If she applied too much strength they would crumble and fall to pieces, leaving behind only brown dust and dirty clothes.
Perfect.
Carefully, she began to cut. She didn’t need much, just a small amount of flowers.
They were at their most dangerous when ingested, but were still toxic to the touch or even when breathed.
That’s why it’s so beautiful. So elegant.
People who really knew her always said that she was strange. Normally she was this calm, solar, person who always had a smile on her face, apart from when she didn’t manage to sleep. But if you dug deeper enough, you would find her passion for poisons and anything related to toxicology. If it can kill, it’s interesting, that’s what she thought.
People said that poison was the coward’s weapon. She thought it was the patient man’s weapon. The intelligent one. Certainly not a coward. You needed dumb bravery and a bit of luck if you wanted to actually use poison well. Go there, talk to people, act like you were meant to be there while you tried to put the poison where you knew it could kill the right person and the right person only.
Because that was the difference between a cowardly poisoner and a brave one. The former just mass murdered everyone to get to the target, killing innocents, while the latter did everything in his power to only get the one person.
When had she become like this borderline obsessed with poison? That… was a question she’d rather not remember the answer to. It was still painful. Too fresh even after a decade.
She finished cutting the flowers off the main hemlock plant. She had enough.
“I need a mortar and pestle. And some boiling water. I’ll infuse this.”
A moment later a pot, a mortar and a pestle appeared beside her. She immediately began grinding the flowers into powder as Sailor filled the pot with river water and put it on a merrily burning fire nearby.
She knew that she could very well infuse the unground petals. The process, after all, only required you to put the thing you want to infuse, usually flowers and leaves (anything bigger and you’d actually need to do a decoction), into boiling water for fifteen minutes if you wanted an aromatic infusion, which only gave taste to the water, or thirty if you needed a medicinal infusion, which would transfer the active ingredient of a plant to the water. She would need that one.
But still, grinding the petals felt right. It felt needed. Her grandma always did that. And so she followed the instinct.
Which was good. Because the Dream was all about that.
When she finished, the flowers had turned into a fine white powder with a bit of liquid at the bottom, since the petals had been really fresh. The fact that she was also sitting on the ground near a river inside a forest didn’t help. Any operation of the sort she was doing would require a sterile space with no outside climatic interference.
But she wasn’t on Earth, where such things were possible, easy even.
So she worked with what she had. A few minutes after she’d finished grinding the flowers she ever so slowly poured the mortar’s contents into the pot of boiling water. Then she closed it with a lid and waited.
“It’s going to take thirty minutes I’m afraid. Sorry for making you wait.”
“Thirty minutes you say?”
“At least.”
“Hmm… nah, I think it’s already ready.”
And he snapped his finger, motioning for her to look at the pot.
“Wha… that doesn’t make any sense! I just put it back on. It cannot be ready.”
“You’re forgetting a small detail here Alice: this is the Land of Dreams, and I wasn’t kidding when I said that Time is a construct.”
And he motioned for her to open the pot.
She hesitated, then moved towards it. But, instead of just opening it up like a complete idiot, she took it by the conveniently wooden handles and moved towards the river, where she put the pot to cool.
After another minute, when she touched it and found it to be at an acceptable temperature, she reached out towards the lid, turning towards Albert: “Can you, like, make an air current to push away any and all vapors that come out?”
Standard procedure, as you can well imagine. Any steam that would certainly come out of the pot would be slightly infused with hemlock’s active ingredient, making it poisonous in its own right. Normally, in a lab, she would have at her disposal a hood that would suck everything upwards and away from her, securely standing on the other side of a protective glass. Here though, she had nothing like that.
And, while she knew it wouldn’t actually hurt her, and while a part of her mind still wanted to know what it felt like, she didn’t give into the impulse.
“Sure.”
A gentle wind began blowing away from her and out towards the other side of the river.
She took away the lid, and moved away as steam billowed out, getting immediately dragged away by the wind.
A minute later, she felt safe enough to walk near. The liquid inside the pot hadn’t changed color, naturally. The idea that poison had bright colors like green or purple was simply absurd. Sure, there were cases when it could assume colors like yellow or even light green, but there weren’t many and the poisons in question were mostly animal in origin.
“Got a vial? Or a bottle? Anything will do.”
Albert did a flourish with his left hand, putting it in the sleeve of his coat, and offered her five little containers.
“Vials are so… typical. These fit you more, I believe.”
And they did. Alice knew that vials were used because they were easier to hide and carry around, but she wasn’t going to go around assassinating people with this thing. Only a nightmare. Probably. If it worked.
“Don’t you dare lose conviction Garda, or I’m going to slap you into tomorrow. And remember that Time means nothing here, so that could take a while.” said Albert sternly.
“Why shouldn’t…”
“Because everything in the Land of Dream is about conviction, perspective and force of will. Those are the things that matter. You were convinced that the poison you were cooking up would do what it was meant to be. That was force of will. You created it using a way you know, following traditions and beliefs that are yours and yours alone. That was conviction. Two out of three things. Lose one, and it’ll lose power. Lose both, and the Dream will make into what it desires.
“So, as much as it pains me to say so, you have to believe. Yes, it sounds stupidly cliché, but that’s how it works. If you can’t believe in something strongly enough, then the Dream will do it for you, and do whatever it wants. Understood?”
Alice nodded. The way he said it, it was easy. Too easy.
“This should’ve been much more difficult, am I right?”
“Extremely so. I expected you to fail the moment I told you you’d have to change the scissors to fit what you want. But you did it! And after that, well, it was like watching a master at work. If I didn’t know better I’d say you’ve been doing this all your life. Being a [Dreamer] I mean. But since I do, well, I can only say you’re a natural.”
Yes, she thought, A natural. Because I come from a world where everyone dreams (heh, pun intended) of having such experiences. I’m a natural because I always prepared myself for the isekai scenario.
She couldn’t contain herself. She laughed.
It was too funny. She had always wanted to be one of those protagonists from webnovels who got taken to another world. And now look at her! A little miss nobody, not special at all, got that chance.
That’s when she realized it: she was free. She could do anything. The potential was endless.
I can have all the fun I want.
As that thought crossed her mind, her smile becoming a bit more sinister, the Dream distorted a bit around her.
Then it was back to normal. And now she was just smiling. Happy. Truly happy for the first time since… since she’d died.
I can bring her work back. Here, in this world, it can work. Herman says Skills can make anything happen if you want it enough. All the things she taught me. All of her knowledge. Even that which was impossible. It can all be real here.
That was the true power given to her.
----------------------------------------
They’d been walking for a while now. She didn’t know how long. An hour? A minute? From what she’d seen up until now not even a single second had passed from that conversation over tea with Albert.
Oh god, that felt like an age ago. They’d been having wine and fun conversations about bingo, and now she was with him out here, hunting a Nightmare down.
Guess this is my life now. Not bad.
The forest was dark, as expected. After all, they were in a place in eternal sunset, under a heavy canopy of trees that let little light through.
So you can very well understand how surprised she was when, suddenly, the light brightened.
No longer were they in the woods. Now they were in a mansion, by the looks of it:
Red drapes partially covered grand windows that went from floor to ceiling, overlooking a great city filled with luminous houses, people milling around like many little ants.
The floor was carpeted, green, and extremely fluffy. Alice could literally feel her feet sink into it in a most comfortable way. Until she realized her feet were actually touching the carpet. Then she looked down and saw that her clothes had changed as well, becoming more… formal. Instead of the trousers and shirt she’d been wearing up until now, she now wore a purple, very Victorian dress with a billowing gown that fluttered around every time she moved. Panic settled in the moment she remembered about Wax’s seed, but when she reached towards her leg to try and feel her pocket, her hand went through the gown and touched only her trousers.
“Do I feel a corset around my waist?”
She was already, well, thin, for lack of a better word. Her mother always said she should eat more, but one could cook only so much in England, where the best thing you can find in a supermarket is cheesecake.
She still remembered the first time she’d done a carbonara for her and her flatmate in england. At the end of the lunch her friend had said that the dish was ‘too tasty’. It feels unnecessary to say that Alice didn’t speak to her for an entire week.
Anyways, she was thin, so the corset didn’t impede her ability to breathe.
Same for the other girls in the group. As for Albert, he hadn’t changed at all, still wearing his evening clothes.
She looked around the room some more, and saw it was empty other than a burning fireplace at the far end, placed between two windows.
And a child sitting on the floor, looking scared, mouth open in a soundless scream.
That’s when Albert spoke:
“This isn’t an adult’s dream. It’s a child.”
His tone was tense.
“How did you guess. Was it the child?” asked Alice.
“No. Adults can become children in their nightmares. It’s the room. Look closer.”
She did. And she noticed that if she stared at the walls hard enough, they began to unfold, became less walls and more… crayon drawings.
“A child sees the things he makes as perfect and identical to life. But at the same time he sees them for what they are. That’s how you can distinguish an adult and a child’s dream.
“The kits are in trouble.”
That’s the last thing he said before everything descended into chaos.
----------------------------------------
The window left of the fireplace exploded inward. The glass shards flew around. A few managed to reach the child, cutting the skin of his arms through the clothes as he tried to protect his face. But the bulk of them went for Alice and the kits.
Before she could think about moving away, an armored body appeared in front of her. It was Knight, and he was holding a shield to protect her and the other kits, who’d decided to hide behind them.
The shards impacted with the shield.
And went through it like a hot knife with butter.
Before they could touch his armor though, Albert clapped his hands. The sound reverberated through the whole room, causing the shards to vibrate, before turning to water.
“[Amplify Sound].” was all he said.
Then he turned towards Knight, making sure he was alright. And shook his head: “What did I tell you, kit? You don’t fight them with your ideas when you’re on their home turf. You adapt, reshape, and lure out.”
Before he could say anything more, something crawled through the broken window. It looked like a centipede. No, scratch that, it looked like a giant centipede made of crawling centipedes, all moving together, over each other, skittering. Black as night, it was longer than the window was high.
As it entered it began to coil in on itself, slowly rising higher and higher, forming a tower of crawling horror. It grew and grew, higher and higher, until it nearly touched the ceiling, and all the while it hissed at the boy.
Finally, when it was all in the room, it changed. Two arms grew from the tower’s sides as, at the base, it split in two, forming legs. Finally, the top began to twist around as if a child had just gotten its grubby hands on a wad of putty and began playing with it. In the end, a head formed, wearing… an actual fedora.
“Another hatted nightmare. What in airm is the meaning of this?” asked Albert.
The thing extended a hand towards the boy, clearly desiring to capture him.
The boy, on his part, screamed and tried to run away on all fours, tears streaming down his eyes. Yet no sound reached them.
And then Albert stepped forward.
His foot touched the ground.
And the entire room shook.
“[They Always Noticed Me].” he whispered.
The nightmare turned its head, featureless face staring right at them now.
Still its hand kept reaching for the boy. And, when it seemed to reach its maximum extension, centipedes crawled out of its fingers, moving towards the boy who, by the looks of it, screamed even louder.
The nightmare seemed to grow ever so slightly at that.
Albert and the thing faced each other. Than the former put a hand in his pocket and took out… a wine bottle?
Yes, it was a green bottle with a label that read ‘Nightmare-buster’. He uncorked it and, with purposeful slowness, poured it onto the ground, probably ruining the drawn carpet.
Then he whispered another Skill: “[Strengthen Concept].”
The wine floated up from the ground and, in a moment, took the form of an arrow. Then it grew, once, twice, thrice the length of the arrow he’d used to kill the two Players.
And it shot towards the black monster, passing right through where its heart should’ve been.
Almost predictably, centipedes began pouring out of the wound, ever so slowly closing it.
“Well, should’ve expected it wouldn’t be enough.” sighed Albert.
The Nightmare turned towards him, Alice and the other kits. It didn’t screech at them. It was completely silent instead, just staring down at them like an elephant would to an ant. With slight contempt.
Then it turned back towards the child, extending its hand again to grab him.
That’s when the first bottle struck its skin.
There was no shattering of glass breaking though. The little bottle just… plopped on the dark skin and, ever so slowly, began sinking in.
“Please tell me you unstoppered the bottle.” said Albert.
Alice held out a small, black, cork that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Now I have.”
After she’d seen how the bottle hadn’t broken, she’d quickly replicated what she’d done with the scissors to the stopper. She’d imagined a bottle without one, the liquid inside pouring out. She’d fixed her mind on a concept of total emptiness.
And the Dream had responded.
The Nightmare turned back towards them…
And inclined its big head in confusion. The first sign of any sort of emotion it’d shown up until now. Because what had just entered its body had been… pleasant. As if it had just drunk in the fear of an entire night’s hunt.
Whatever it was, it felt filling. Pleasantly so.
It wanted more.
And, seeing how the bottle had come from the group of outsiders, it stepped towards them, away from its prey.
Albert cursed under his breath. It was something about Soma’s asshole being filled with something. Alice was sure she didn’t want to know what exactly.
“Kits, run.” he just said, before he turned around and began shoving them all towards the door that had appeared behind them when they’d entered the child’s dream.
“Run and don’t stop until you’re back home. Yes, even you Dancer and Knight. This is big.”
Then he turned towards Alice and took her arm in his hand: “I would tell you to run too, but I’m sure you won’t listen, and I think this Nightmare will follow you to the waking world.”
“Wait, can it?”
“I don’t know and I’m sure you don’t want to find out. Now, why isn’t it exploding?”
“You’re asking me? It’s my first time doing this!”
She shouted. Meanwhile, the Nightmare kept walking towards them, but the room was becoming longer and longer, as if someone was stretching it like putty. She noticed, then, that Albert was pointing a finger towards the Nightmare and twirling it around, as if trying to mix the air.
“Yes, I’m asking you because that poison was made out of your convictions.”
“I know. But it was made to be more than just poison!”
“Why the fuck would you make a poison that’s not just poison?”
“Because I thought of Nightmares as a disease, and so I made something to fight it!”
“So that’s not just fucking poison? It’s medicine?”
“It’s a vaccine!”
“What in the names of the Old is a vaccine?”
“Not the time?”
The shouting match ended as the Nightmare got bored of walking towards them and, instead, extended an arm and shot a score of crawling centipedes towards them.
They ran, reaching for the door.
And then the Nightmare was right in front of it, as if it had always stood right there.
“Shit!”
“Fuck!”
They both shouted in a chorus, before doing a one-eighty degree turn, running back towards the child.
“Ok, well, time for plan B.” said Albert.
“What’s plan B?”
“Come up with a plan C, because I don’t have any.”
“What do you mean you don’t have a plan?”
“I had one before that thing took a potion of strength!”
“I’m sorry, ok?”
They ran. And Alice began thinking. She turned around, then turned back the other way wishing she hadn’t done that. Behind them the Nightmare had gone back to its giant centipede form and was crawling towards them faster than they could run.
“[Nightmare Rules: Closer and Closer, It Never Reached Me]!” shouted Albert.
The Dream behind them twisted and turned, then settled. Nothing seemed to change: the centipede nightmare kept on crawling towards them, still as fast as before. Yet, at the same time, she noticed, it didn’t seem to be getting closer. Not as much as before.
“That’s going to slow it down, but not for long. I’m not a [Nightmare Tamer].” he spat the name of the last Class out with enough venom that some actual green liquid came out of his mouth.
They kept running. The room wasn’t supposed to be this long. Well, truth be told, the room wasn’t supposed to be a corridor with prismatic patterns painted on the walls. When had that changed?
Alice looked at her belt, where four more bottles were left.
For a moment, she thought about just throwing those too, but it wouldn’t make sense. This wasn’t just poison, after all. This was a vaccine, crafted with poison. And it wasn’t as if you could just give someone multiple shots of the same vaccine to immunize them faster.
Unless…
“Albert, you told me that everything in the Dream is about conviction, perspective and force of will.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, what if, instead of making the vaccine weaker, I lost part of my perspective. The part that actually sees this as a vaccine, and make it become just simple poison.”
“And how do you propose you do that?”
She was stalled. Indeed, how could she? How could she forget that what she’d made was the way it had been made? It wasn’t that simple. It was like trying to purposefully forget about something: the moment you started to wonder what the fuss was all about, it came back with a vengeance.
So how could she do it?
She looked down at the bottles of poison/vaccine that clinked with her movements.
And knew what she had to do.
She took one in her hand, uncorked it and…
“Bottoms up!” she told Albert as she drank down the whole bottle in one go.
It… didn’t taste like much. It was water with just a tang of something acidic as an aftertaste. Not bad, really. Like drinking lemonade after it had been sitting out in the open, under the sun, for too long.
She ran as Albert shouted at her, asking if she was stupid. But she wasn’t. Because, after all, this vaccine had been made for a Nightmare. Out of poison. And she wasn’t the individual for which it had been crafted.
After a minute, or maybe less, her breath became heavier. She tried to breath harder, her mouth opening wider and wider as she tried to gulp down more air. ‘Air hunger’ was what her father called the feeling.
Then, all of a sudden, she fell to the ground, her body seizing up. She tried to inhale, but her diaphragm wouldn’t budge, locked in place together with the rest of the muscles in her body.
Fuck, this isn’t pleasant at all.
The centipede was crawling close now, the Skill keeping it at bay no longer working apparently since it were actually getting closer. She could see it better now: the pincers around its mouth as long as her body when they weren’t even completely open. Big enough to kill her in a single movement.
Her instincts flared up, panic settling in. She knew she wasn’t going to die, but it didn’t matter at all that fucking thing was going to eat her!
She tried to struggle and move away, but couldn’t, because her body was dying and she couldn’t breath and why the hell had she thought drinking that poison would be a good idea?
Then the centipede was on her. The charm around her wrist, for a moment, worked, keeping the nightmare away from her body. But it was so simple, and it held so little power and conviction, unlike her poison. It burned away.
And it trampled her, and she felt pain blossom all over her body as she was crushed.
As the bottles of poison were crushed.
As it all seeped in the Nightmare’s body.
Her vision was fuzzy now. She couldn’t see… anything.
Yet she heard the Nightmare screech. And that was enough.
[Conditions Met: Dreamer -> Dream Poisoner!]
[Dream Poisoner Level 10!]
[Skill - Tools of the Trade Obtained!]
[Skill - Dream: Quick Poison Obtained!]
[Skill - Poison: Enhance Taste Obtained!]
[Skill – Concept: Reduce Complexity Obtained!]
[Skill - My Sky Followed Me In My Dreams Obtained!]
----------------------------------------
Alice woke up in her bed.
The sun was shining through a small crack in the closed curtains.
Someone was pounding on her door, shouting her name. Probably Averick, come to check if the Greater Potion of Sleep had had any adverse effects. And, truth be told, it did have an unexpected effect. One she really liked.
She rose from her bed, well rested and proud of herself, because she knew for certain that she’d done it. She’d killed that thing!
She opened the door to her home, and smiled. She had a new purpose.