The dream took place in the baleful dark, this time. Anselm found himself not in the usual setting, but in a cave far dimmer and colder. His senses were a garbled mess, for all he felt more aware than he had during the earliest days of him actively seeking these dreams. He could hear the lapping of the waves against stone and perhaps something more, the whooshing of winds that had no place in an area so small. Something brushed against him in passing, gone between one breath and the next.

Beryl, he thought, struggling to keep his sister’s name at the forefront of his mind as he commanded the dream to seek her out. He hadn’t sought to retrieve the locket from his niece on a whim, but because he lacked anything of a magical nature he could truly tell was connected to her.

Mere intent would have to do, for he would not push. Not after how the girl had reacted, in any case. Perhaps I was in the wrong for asking that of her.

Oh, he had stated as much, but at times, he knew not whether he apologized because it was the appropriate response, or because he truly felt he had acted improperly. Most of his actions were justified—beyond justified, after everything he’d been through.

All thanks to Katrina. Even thinking of his mother brought bile to Anselm’s throat, the depth of her crimes something he could never comprehend, let alone forgive. He’d never even conceived the notion of someone wanting to deny their own children their birthright, a chance to live beyond mortality, and such a person had been his mother, all along.

To him, her decision was equivalent to her deciding she wanted her children to grow old and die when there had been an alternative.

He digressed—ever since he’d considered whether Beryl had known about their mother going out of her way to bar them from inheriting the Affinities she had, the thought had wormed its way into his head, refusing to allow itself to be dismissed.

Beryl had known—she must have—yet she was not here, for him to consult his oldest sister on any of this. She had not shared such knowledge, of course, but he could not imagine a reality where he had discovered it, yet she somehow had not.

With Beryl absent and Katrina dead, these dreams were the only potential source of information for him. He’d sought to learn from them as often as he could, though the repetitiveness of them kept Anselm from ever feeling as though he were making the most of them. He’d seen and felt his mother’s end too many times to count, that inhuman pain of dissolution something he’d grown numb to by now.

In dreams, he felt as though time were irrelevant, as if he could turn one corner and find himself watching a scene from before he’d been alive unfold, and yet, he never reached the point where he believed he could force it to be any clearer. He wandered the maze of his own thoughts, the woven reality brought forth by he knew not what—the Blessing, perhaps—and sighed to himself.

His surroundings turned watery as he locked in on the concept of his sister. Not her as a person or the idea of what she might have known, but Beryl Rīsanin as a person. This was the best he could do—while the dreams were something he could not control, their very nature unfathomable and potentially influenced by a god, he was not entirely helpless in them.

The world twisted, then, and Anselm felt himself surfacing.

He gasped for air despite his surreal surroundings, the sensation of water clinging to his skin a bit too vivid by the dream’s standards. The waters around him were unlike the stench of the sea, tasting and smelling no different than the water brought forth by their estate’s enchanted plumbing.

As he oriented himself, he reached the natural conclusion that this had to be a pond—obviously. Plant matter he could not recognize despite his chosen vocation floated within, and grew within its depths.

Anselm kicked and reached with his arms on a poor show of swimming ability, pushing past an oversized lilypad to reach the nearby rocks. Pulling himself up, he found even his robes felt heavier, waterlogged, and he frowned.

This was a dream. While he had no control over what it showed him, did he not have some control over himself?

Robes were more convenient for lounging around—and for keeping up a proper alchemist appearance, as Old Martin had taught him—but they were horribly impractical for something like this, weighing him down as if he’d gone swimming with them in reality.

At the thought, his robes were replaced by trousers and a short tunic, both lifeless grey in color. They appeared as false as some of the dimmer elements of the dreams sometimes did, but Anselm was not about to speak ill of this, not when it had been exactly what he’d wished for.

This made the climb up considerably easier, and it became clear to him, then, that he was not too far from the edge of the pond. Even someone as unskilled as him could likely swim the distance with little effort, yet what he saw held him in place.

His sister was sitting on a red-and-white blanket atop the grass, her hair slightly longer than how he remembered it. All her life, Beryl Rīsanin had insisted on practicality—they’d gotten into arguments in their youth, with him preferring the aesthetic versatility of long hair while she touted the perks of not having too care much about her hair while it was short.

You underestimate how much time I save every day, little brother, she’d told him once, with one of those practiced, sly smiles. I haven’t the time nor energy to waste on anything that takes longer than a light brushing.

It was silly, the type of conversation that would be buried in memory, but in this moment, Anselm recalled it clearly, almost as if to justify his confusion at her current appearance. Shoulder-length hair felt diametrically opposed to the image he had of his sister.

Her attire was also uncharacteristic. She wore a plain burgundy blouse with long sleeves and a matching, long plaid skirt, the hems irregular.

It’s been years. Perhaps she’s changed, the more rational part of his mind told him, for all he tried to push the thought away. His instinct was to try and find as many things that were wrong with her appearance as possible, how different she was from how he remembered her, instead of considering how time might have affected her.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Because it certainly had—the dreams were odd at times, disjointed, but never once had he doubted they were true, not when the inexorable warmth of the Blessing reassured him each time he wondered.

Beryl smiled as she pulled a bundle out from the basket next to her, mindful not to crush its contents as she laid them out on the blanket under her. The fabric reflected light, and it struck Anselm, then, that he was witnessing sunlight.

Where are you? This place wavered, its presence past, and so Anselm amended the question he could not bring himself to voice within the dream. Where were you?

Could it have been the surface? Anselm had to be the first to admit he knew next to nothing about it, for all he’d seen it once—perhaps twice—within his dreams. Shimmering grass and lush trees, a calm breeze flowing through them, were that which he saw surrounding Beryl.

A figure approached, too distant for Anselm to make out the details, but Beryl’s smile turned to a genuine grin as she seemingly locked eyes with whoever it was.

The dream faltered, then, and trying to hold on to it was not unlike attempting to grasp at flowing water. It slipped through his fingers, the motion hopeless, all the while he could feel it leaving.

Anselm reached for the golden lump that had positioned itself at the center of his core, pressing it with all his might as he attempted to draw more strength from it. That sunlit warmth in his veins intensified, reaching his malformed channels, and he dove back into the dream.

This time, the grassy plain was empty.

“Hello,” a voice said, and Anselm jumped, his stilled heart jumping to his throat. He turned in a rush, to catch a glimpse of the speaker.

A redhead stood by the treeline, one strand of hair curling up into a spiral just above her shoulder, with a seashell pinned at the center. Her eyes, too, were the glassy green commonly seen in seafarers.

Anselm returned the greeting, seeing no harm in it. “Hello.”

The woman stared at him, a faint smile in her lips, for an uncomfortably long time, despite the nature of the dream. She did not blink until she shook her head, her smile dropping. “Where are my manners? I was simply wondering if I should recognize you.”

Frowning, Anselm stayed where he was, still clinging to the rocks. “I confess I know not who you are, so I would hazard a guess and say no.”

She laughed. “That is likely the case, I realize now, for all I’m tempted to make guesses of my own.”

It was strange, the whole of it. Not once had any of his dreams felt as interactive as this, not once had he felt as though he could speak with anything within and expect an answer.

“Why are you here?” he asked of the woman.

She tipped her head to one side, her seashell bouncing along. “To dream, of course. Same as you.”

That caught Anselm off-guard, the implication clear. He must have allowed his confusion to show, as the woman only chuckled louder this time.

“How quaint for someone to not know what this is,” she said, her eyes lingering on him. She examined him almost with a clinical eye, as if he were a phenomenon to be studied. “Do people not dream often, where you’re from?” She shook her head. “Stupid of me to ask. Of course. Different worlds, different meanings. What the Affinity you dream with means to you might not mean the same to me, and thus, you may not know why it is what it is. No, I cannot get involved.”

She continued shaking her head, taking a step back. A hand went to her forehead as if she were confirming whether she was feverish.

Though nonplussed, Anselm focused on the one thing he had been seeking, the question that brought him to this place in his dreams, to begin with. “Do you know anything about Beryl Rīsanin?”

The woman’s eyes refocused, now fiery as they met his gaze. “How do you know that name?”

How she’d snapped back offended him—that, he could not deny. “That is the name of a sister of mine,” Anselm replied, matching her glare. “And given your reaction, I find myself doubting you do not know it in turn.”

“You’ve next to no clue as to what I may not know, Rīsan,” she snorted. Despite the oddity of the setting, and her implication that she might be from elsewhere, she clearly understood how Grēdôcavan family names worked. “I know it, yes—but I cannot help you. All I can tell you is to, in the future, keep your dreams to yourself.”

He could only give her a bewildered look in return—he certainly hadn’t meant to encounter anyone when drawing on the Blessing’s power, let alone known it was possible.

“Who are you?” Anselm asked as the woman continued walking away. She had the appearance of a seafarer, but such things could be deceiving, and making assumptions based on how someone looked was the swiftest way to box oneself in.

The woman only looked at him over her shoulder once, her eyes narrowed. “Agneta the Ere.”

He only had a moment for the thought that she was unlikely to actually be a seafarer with the ease with which she answered, after all, and then she was gone, the dream folding in on itself.

It was as though it had leapt back in time, much as previous dreams had, over and over again.

Agneta was gone, and once again, he watched a silent Beryl pull something from the basket next to her, over the blanket.

Each time the silhouette of a persona appeared in the distance, Beryl would grin, and the dream would return to its start.

It might have been a man, Anselm realized. Something about the figure reminded him of his father’s men, for all he rarely saw them. It was a posture that carried itself almost by marching, a cartoonish portrayal of military discipline.

What was she doing, here?

He wasn’t about to conclude something as absurd as this being a memory of his sister in a different world, not when Agneta being an invader of sorts would have made far more sense. Agneta might have been a Champion—after all, not all worlds the summoned came from lacked a system, or so Old Martin had once claimed.

Indeed, it was a far more logical conclusion, with Agneta understanding their surnames and recognizing Beryl’s name.

His mind was reeling by now. Could Beryl be so far from Beuzaheim, that she’d encountered such a Champion? Those weren’t particularly common around here—it was why the Champion Saint had chosen to settle, after all.

Awakening in his bed, Anselm took deep breaths. As the burning in his veins subsided, the beating of his heart reaching its usual slow pace, he allowed himself to relax. He was not too fond of the disorientation that sometimes followed dreams, that disconnect between his thoughts and his body.

He wanted nothing more than to summon his research log and take notes before any details slipped from him, but waves of nausea flowed through him at the barest of movements. He’d hurl his empty stomach out if he so much as tried to straighten.

In the end, he found himself forced to prioritize crafting the first thing he could manage, hunched over all throughout. As he did, it struck him that he couldn’t recall when he had last eaten—the freshly prepared antiemetic he downed hardly counted.

Only then, as the ability to comfortably sit down was finally returned to him, could he finally summon his notebook. His ability to put it all to words, however, was currently diminished.

> A grassy plain surrounded by trees in all directions. Beryl near the center, atop a blanket. Clothes of an unrecognizable style.

>

> Someone else was there. She called herself Agneta the Ere, and she knew Beryl somehow.

>

> An otherworlder who referred to these dreams as something beyond what I have been experiencing.

>

> Beryl was involved with otherworlders?

In truth, the fact that Agneta’s commentary hadn’t rendered him insensate was the most unexpected detail. As far as he could tell, he had been involved in a conversation related to his Blessing by virtue of it transpiring in a dream, yet it had not punished him for it.

Or are the dreams themselves beyond its domain?

This warranted further study, but his mind soon shifted elsewhere.

All Anselm could do was wonder one simple thing—how was he to start searching for Beryl on his own, now that he knew she must have been quite far from the estate and even Beuzaheim?

He would have to search for her himself. Unable to speak of this as he was, he could see no other path forward.