Book 3. Chapter 56

Book 3. Chapter 56

The dream began in Alheadra, but not in the city below. Aberfa stood in front of enormous black gates rising incredibly high into the air, but still only the small basement floor of Arcaena’s massive citadel. He could see now that it was deceptively large; everything was in such large proportions that he hadn’t quite understood the size of it when he viewed it from far away.

His body’s mother was different tonight. She was pitch black, a walking, breathing void of light. She smiled. “You made the right decision. Now come and I will reveal all.”

“No tricks. I want the secret first. I’m not doing anything else until you give me what you promised.”

Her grin grew wider. “Yes of course! That is my desire as well.”

She turned and opened the massive gates as easily as flicking open her own front door and the dream shifted.

The world looked like it had all been scrawled by a pencil on paper, like they were living in the sketch that might soon become a children’s story book. The dark shape of Aberfa waved and a flower-covered plain grew up from the worn yellow page, reaching towards a fairy-tale castle in the distance. “Once upon a time, before there was a nation called Arcaena there was a nation named Edelor. The nation was peaceful and just and its champions were righteous. Wisest and strongest of all these champions was a man named Bouwen. He was fair of face, strong of arm, as well as kind and good. He did good wherever he went and struck down tyrant and monster alike.”

The world shifted quickly like the sudden flapping of pages, and Brin was treated to several scenes of a knight in shining armor striving against perilous foes, and just as many pages of him being celebrated wherever he went.

“I once told you that there was no such thing as evil Classes. Did you believe me when I told you that?”

“No,” Brin answered.

Aberfa sang out a string of tinkling laughter. “Fair enough. But I will implore you to believe me when I say this: there are such things as good Classes. Bouwen had such a Class. A Legendary Class. He was a [Paladin].”

Brin sucked in a mouthful of air. He had barely heard anything of Legendary Classes. As far as he knew, even [Archmage of the Mystical Elements] was only an Epic Class.

“It’s strange to hear you praise a man like this,” said Brin.

Aberfa shook out her hair. “How could I not? If all men were such as he, there would be no such thing as [Witches]. But now I fear I must tell you of Bouwen’s folly and fall. After ridding all evil in his own kingdom, he ventured forth to cleanse the world. He traveled high and low and eventually made his way to a powerful coven of [Witches]. One of those very [Witches] was she who was not yet called Arcaena.”

The picture book they were living inside never showed Arcaena’s face, careful to shift around to her back in every scene she was in, and black robes and a hat obscured the figure. He could tell it was her, somehow, even though she was always surrounded by a dozen other [Witches].

“They did battle. Their war was fierce and rearranged the landscape and caused natural calamities. For years afterwards, the nearby lands were plagued with floods on one hand, and droughts on the other. Then it was over. At great cost, Bouwen was slain,” said Aberfa.

A lone [Witch] stood over the armored figure of Bouwen, still regal even in death.

“Much was lost, but she gained even more. She gained her name and power, and what’s more, she had the greatest warrior in the world. Possibly the greatest in a thousand years or longer. She had... his corpse, anyway.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” said Brin.

“And why would you?” asked Aberfa.

He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t, and kept smiling a hospitable little smile. Aberfa never smiled this much unless she was holding a dagger behind her back.

“She made him into an undead, didn’t she?”

She shook her head, looking pleased that he had drawn the obvious and incorrect conclusion. “No. His Class was too good. Any necromantic power laid upon his body would’ve been burned away by the authority that still rested upon him. No, nothing would do for this champion except an honorable burial.”

Brin sneered. “She just buried him? That’s it? You really want me to believe that she didn’t have a use for him?”

“Of course not. She had a use for him.”

The storybook vision faded away, and then they were back inside the fortress at Alhaedra, though Aberfa was still black like a living blotch of ink. Brin could see the massive gates behind him; they were in a great hall. A painting of the starry sky covered the ceiling with the constellations charted out. Tall braziers glowing with a violet flame dotted the space, and a gigantic mural of a dark-clad [Witch] with a bandage-wrapped face covered the floor. Probably Arcaena herself.

“What use did she have for his corpse?” Brin asked.

“First, understand that our bargain is complete. I have already told you information that would shake Frenaria, Olland, and Prinnash to their foundations if they knew. I will tell you the rest, as well. Before we get to that, did you ever wonder what Class I have picked out for you?”

Brin mulled over whether or not he would object to the change in subject. The Wyrd was telling him that she was right; she really had told him enough to consider her promise kept. He didn’t have grounds to object.

“What were you going to do to me?” asked Brin.

“Guess.”

“Something to do with Bouwen. You never told me how she killed him. I bet that’s a clue. You were going to turn me into a Class that can kill [Paladins].”

Aberfa raised her eyes in surprise. “What? No! Well, I suppose I can’t really say no, can I? But no. Try again. What would you have guessed before we came in here?”

“[Pet],” Brin decided. “You’ve been training me. Punishing me harshly for mistakes and rewarding good behavior. You want an obedient dog.”

“No,” said Aberfa. “I’m not against having [Pets], to be fair.”

A pathetic excuse for a human appeared on the floor in front of them. He was middle aged and balding, but every indication showed he had the mental age of a child. He crawled and cavorted happily around them both, his eyes vacant and dull.

“Have I shown you how to grant that Class? It isn’t just obedience training. You have to convince them, truly make them believe with all their heart, that they cannot survive without you. This is most easily done with the removal of the arms or legs.”

The man shifted into a young child and Aberfa stepped towards him with an angrily spinning buzz-saw.

“Stop! I don’t want to see this!”

“Why not? Some day you may find it necessary.”

“I won’t. I’m certain I won’t,” said Brin.

Aberfa’s inky face looked at him in contempt, her smile slipping for the first time. “Some day you’ll have children and you’ll understand. You’ll understand the need to turn your heart into steel to protect them, to give them the future they need, the future they deserve.”

Brin shook his head. “You’re sick.”

“I’m what I had to be to give you happiness. I’m the only creature in the world capable of giving you the right kind of life. No, Aberthol. I have uses for [Pets] but a son is not a pet.”

“Happiness? Torturing me for all those years was supposed to make me happy? If you wanted me to be happy, you could’ve let me stay home and be a [Glasser].”

Her black on black eyes flicked with red. “You never could’ve been a [Glasser]. You were made for greater things! You didn’t want to be normal. You knew you would be great!”

Brin sighed. “You never had any idea what I wanted. You never cared.”

“Wrong. I am your mother. I saw you take your first steps and I heard your first words. I heard your first breath and from that first breath I knew. I knew that you could never be like the other children. You were made for something more.”

“I never wanted to be some Arcaenean dark Class abomination,” said Brin.

“No. You’re right. You think I wanted you to be a [Scarred One]? It all would’ve been much simpler if that’s all I had in mind for you. But you didn’t want to be angry, unfeeling and cruel. You wanted to be good and kind.”

Brin shook his head, confused. This wasn’t where he thought this conversation was going.

The dark-colored Aberfa continued. “[Illusionist] was wrong, too. You’re not a deceiver. When you were young, you hated deception of any sort. You were good. Don’t you understand? You were kind and you defended the weak, even if it led to you getting hurt. Even if you suffered or were punished or mocked. You never lied to me, not until I taught you to. You were good, and Arcaena is not the place for good men.”

Brin was confused. All of this was wrong. “What are you saying?”

“You'll see. Let’s look at some more Classes. [Scab Eater], you know that one. [Blood Harvester], now this is interesting.”

“I know this is a dream. It’s not going to work,” said Brin.

“Not now. But it will work to soften you up,” said Aberfa. “And don’t try to wake up. The time for allowing you to think that is a possibility is done. I’ve taken off the kid gloves.”

The monsters charged forwards, intent on ripping and tearing him to pieces.

“Then so will I,” said Brin.

He reached with his mind into a secret pocket bead of glass, and pulled out the memories he’d stored there. Inside, he found his best arguments.

He’d known the effect that calling Aberfa “mother” would have on him, so before he’d ever done it, he’d made sure to store every single argument against her that he could think of in a memory, to be used when he was ready to break free. Then he’d used every point of Mental Control he had to force himself to never think of it again until it was time.

He’d worried when he’d made these arguments that they wouldn’t still apply when the time came, but as he reviewed them, he found they were better than ever.

“Monster. You are not my mother,” said Brin.

Shadow Aberfa froze in the air, and the army of monsters recoiled.

“My name is Brin isu Yambul. Aberthol Beynon was a sad, pathetic little boy and he died. He’s gone and will never return. You are not the mother of my spirit. You are also not the mother of my body. The mother of my body was a living human woman named Aberfa. You are not that woman. You do not possess that body. You’re nothing but a monster.”

He felt the Wyrd shift, breaking down the oppressive structure that they’d been building these past months, undermining her authority over him.

“Silence!” Aberfa screamed. She urged her beasts onwards.

Brin summoned glass to form a wall of blades around himself. He didn’t use his magic, for once. Instead, he bent the dream to make the defenses appear. The first line of monsters impaled themselves on them.

“How?” Aberfa roared.

Brin held up a glass bottle, a replication of the one Sion had given him. “Potion of Lucid Dreams.”

“You think that can overpower me? I am a master of nightmares.”

Brin shrugged. “I didn’t need to overpower you. I just needed something for my arguments to grab hold of. Speaking of which, let me reiterate: You are not my mother. Even if you were, I would have no duty to listen to you. You are sadistic and cruel. You tortured Aberthol into such despair that he chose to end his own life rather than continue on. Any claims you had on him or me ended that day.”

Aberfa urged her monsters to greater fury, and they began to break down the defenses he built. “I am your mother. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. I am the one who nursed you, who taught you, who prepared you for life.”

A slashing claw, from a beast that looked like a giant praying mantis cut Brin through the stomach. He fixed it with a thought. “You are not. I already have a mother. Her name is Lumina.”

She appeared in a pillar of light, as if calling her name also created her namesake. The beasts in a ten foot circle burned to ash as a red-robed woman descended from heaven to lightly touch down on the earth so softly it was almost as if the very earth itself were rising up to kiss her feet instead.

Lumina peered around curiously from under her wide-brimmed red hat. “Well look at this! How curious! What a treat.”

“A useless gesture. She’s not real,” said Aberfa.

“And why should that matter?” asked Lumina. She flicked her wrist, a testing spell that shot forth a band of frost that carved a wide swath through the endless horde of monsters. “Oh! Very interesting. Brin, might I assume that we’re in your nightmares right now?”

“Yeah,” Brin said. “Can you help with this?”

“Of course.” Lumina raised her staff and began to go to work. She didn’t speak in the Language this time; Brin’s mind wasn’t large enough to replicate the power she could bring to bear with her words. Her presence here was more metaphorical, and because even in his dreams, neither he nor Aberfa could imagine her losing to anything.

A shattering wind dashed whole fields of monsters to pieces. Others were engulfed in a city-sized tsunami while others were buried in the fire of a falling sun. Lumina brought an apocalypse to bear in every direction of the dream.

He felt the dream start to collapse as Aberfa tried to shove him back awake. Lumina threw her staff, and it transformed into four gigantic chains, moving in directions that didn’t exist in three-dimensional reality. The chains had hooks on the end, and in a way that he could see but comprehend, they latched onto the ends of the dream and held it into place.

“How?” Aberfa gasped.

Lumina laughed. “What ever could you mean? My dearest beast, I am an [Archmage].”

“Wait. Lumina, are you really here?” asked Brin.

“A complex question. Suffice it to say that an [Archmage] must always be wherever she is,” said Lumina.

Aberfa fled, and Lumina followed.

Aberfa summoned back Alhaedra with its impregnable fortress, and Lumina smashed it to rubble.

Aberfa turned into a rainbow to flee at the speed of light, and Lumina arrived at her destination before she did. She smacked Aberfa with her staff, causing her to shriek in pain. All the while Brin followed along in the air, scarcely more than a ghost.

“Flee from me, beast. Run!” Lumina cheered.

Aberfa tried to bury herself in the earth, to launch herself into space or hide herself in the clouds. Lumina met her in each place, burning her with fire or scouring her with lightning.

Aberfa screamed in panic and lost her womanly form. Tentacles sprouted from her arms, and her body started to grow, her clothes melting into a monstrous form.

“No! Don’t look at me!” She cast herself into the sea, and Brin felt her trying to tear the dream to pieces, shredding it so that even Lumina’s chains couldn’t keep it together.

Brin found himself feeling real again, holding his spear on a beach. There were black obelisks dotting the water, but the fog meant he couldn’t see very far.

“No! Don’t look at it!” Aberfa screamed.

More monsters surged up from the surf, vicious-looking sea monsters. Lumina dispatched them with smaller, more concentrated strings of fire, and one even got close enough that Brin had to push it back with his spear.

“Almost there,” said Lumina. “Eyes open.”

She cast a bright explosion of fire into the sky, so bright it burned his eyes, but he forced them to stay open.

The mist retreated, and Brin saw more of those black obelisks... no, they were a rock formation. The foothills of gigantic rock walls. There was a city up above in the distance. He knew where this was. These were the famous black cliffs of Blackcliff.

“Do you have what you need?” Lumina asked.

The dream was collapsing all around them. It would be over in seconds, but it didn’t matter.

“I do. Thank you,” said Brin.

She gave him a half-hug, still holding the staff in her other hand. “See you soon. In the real world, next time, hm?”

Then it was over. He woke up and drew a deep breath into his nose, which was mostly blocked by his blanket.

“I have it! I know where Aberfa is!” Brin shouted. Or rather, he tried to. There was something in his mouth.

He’d been gagged. His hands were tied. There was a wagon on fire in his narrow field of view, under the blindfold over his eyes.

Bandits. The caravan was under attack, and he’d already been captured.