Dreamcatcher

by Christian Rosnell

  In one fluid, well-practiced motion, Seth unscrolled a bit of paper from his arm guard and ejected the pen, writing on the paper “What do you say we contact Troy and Kiara about our progress so far? I know we haven’t worked on Mikael as much, but I’ve already been able to talk with Lyght, and he seems to be on board with working with us.”

  Iri took the note and read it, nodding, “Yeah, you’re probably right. Even though we’re by no means finished yet, we should probably just check in to give a status update.” Iri pushed forward from leaning against the balcony and reached down for the Dreamcasting pen she kept sheathed at her waist. Before she could draw it, however, Seth noticed an odd shimmering in front of them, like an invisible liquid mirror. They both knew what that meant.

  Oddly, Troy and Kiara had tried to contact them a moment before Seth and Iri were about to do the same. Iri laughed and drew the pen out, “Wow, how’s that for timing?” She began drawing the shape of the shimmering air to activate it from their side. It took about a minute to focus, vague colors wavering on the screen, but when it did, a surprising sight came into view.

  Seth recognized the place they were looking at after a moment as the Syndicate headquarters near one of the eastern gates of the Great Gate. He’d been there once, but was surprised to see the current company the headquarters held. He could see the typical staff personnel who worked for the Dream Syndicate, as many people did in the North, standing behind Troy and Kiara. However, he could also see a group of a few dozen or so teens standing to the side, look and complexion clearly indicating that they were Southerners. Seth frowned, exchanging a glance with Iri. What were Southerners doing that far North, in a Syndicate hideout? To Seth’s knowledge, that had never happened before. The Dream Syndicate was an almost exclusively Northern organization, and Seth couldn’t help but question Troy’s judgment in letting dozens of Southerners, probably very loyal to the King, into the headquarters. He decided to withhold judgment until Troy spoke on the matter, however.

  Seth saw Kiara wave at Troy’s side, “Hey, what’s going on guys?”

  Iri responded of course, “Not much. Actually, we were just about to contact you guys to report in on our status. But forget that for now. What’s happening on your end? Who are all those people?”

  Troy nodded, “Funny that you were just trying to contact us. Pardon me saying, however, that the report will have to wait. We have something much more important to show you guys. Believe me, this is really awesome”. Seth and Iri nodded, but Seth couldn’t help but be very curious. In his years of knowing Troy, he didn’t know if he’d seen the guy look more urgent and excited than he did now. Seth had to wonder what could’ve made him like that.

  Troy turned around, the screen shimmering a bit, and motioned to the large group of foreigners standing behind him, “As you guys can probably tell, these people here are from the South – the Hope domain, actually. Long story short, I think we can trust them, because they are actually trying to destroy the Dark as well.” Seth’s breath caught – he couldn’t believe it. Really? Southerners who want to destroy the Dark? Maybe… maybe something is changing after all.

  “Anyway”, Troy continued, “they tried to gain admittance through the Great Gate by pretending to be businessmen here for peaceful purposes, but our routine inspections found a wealth of weapons on them, hidden in the bags of their packhorses. The Gate guard here at this location, being a bit clueless and incapable of solving it by himself, sent them straight to us. Luckily for both us and them, however, this turned out to be the best case scenario.”

  Troy shook his head, “It’s amazing, really. Upon learning who me and Kiara are, one of this group here stepped up and declared that they were in fact in the North looking for us, because… well”, Troy turned behind him, motioning an determined-looking girl forward, saying “She explained all this to me, so I’ll let her do the talking.” Troy gestured to the screen, looking at the girl, “Sky, this is Seth and Iridia – Iri for short – the other two leaders of the Dream Syndicate. They’re currently in Pride on official business, but you can show them what you showed us.”

  The young girl named Sky stepped forward, and Seth sized her up. She looked to be fifteen or sixteen maybe, with her brown hair in a ponytail and a sky-blue bandana tied around her forehead. She was, from what Seth could tell, the only girl in the group. And, apparently, their leader.

  Sky nodded to Seth and Iri in greeting, and began her explanation, “Nice to meet you Iri, Seth. Like he said, my name is Sky, and me and my friends here are from the Hope domain. Long way, I know.” She turned to glance back at her group, smiling, “You could say that we were originally adventurers, wannabe pirates, troublemakers. Kids. Well, we’re all still young, but what we want is not a kid’s dream anymore, not since…” The girl named Sky paused, collecting herself, and looked Seth and Iri in the eyes from hundreds of miles away. Seth didn’t know her, but already found himself impressed by her character, for some reason he couldn’t place. That, and she seemed oddly familiar for some reason…

  The girl addressed Seth and Iri, “Well, it was originally my idea to try and destroy the Dark, but my friends caught onto it as well as soon as they realized how important it was; that, and as soon as they came to believe it was actually possible. I can stay awake in the Dark, you see, although I’m not a Dreamcaster. I don’t understand that at all, but I figured I might as well make the most of it. I knew more than any normal person about the Dark, so I told myself that it was up to me to destroy it. I’m just lucky that my friends here in the crew wanted to help me out with it.”

  Seth nodded, thinking. So they had gained some new allies, it seemed. That by itself was no big deal though; the Dream Syndicate already had a wealth of personnel working for them in the North. Maybe it would help to establish Southern contacts, he figured.

  But Sky continued on, “Nothing really remarkable happened until we followed up on a vague tip to investigate a marked location on the island of Apathy, on information that something “interesting” would happen with the Dark there. When we reached the hilltop marked on our map, and keep in mind it was a Dark night, I happened to notice a dark steel box sitting on the ground, apparently undisturbed.” She paused, apparently trying to describe it, “I opened the box, obviously, and something really… weird happened. There was this object inside, which I’ll show you in a second, and a note with it. The note, which I have here, reads; ‘Behold the Dreamcatcher – Talisman of courage, Gatekeeper of the spirit, Weapon of the light.’”

  The girl motioned one of her friends over, and he pulled the object out of its small dark steel box, holding it up in front of the screen. Seth examined it – a series of pentagonal shapes were woven with some sort of string or thread inside a circle, with other bits of woven material and apparently feathers hanging down. He frowned, not sure what it was supposed to be. What did it do?

  Sky took the Dreamcatcher from her friend, looping it over her finger, and explained further, “The reason this is important, you see, is because as soon as I touched the thing, it glowed this weird electric blue and actually tore a hole – if that makes any sense – in the Dark sky above. Through the hole, or whatever, there was this black, or less dark at least, sheet with these sparkling white dots on it. It’s… it’s kind of hard to describe, but the most amazing thing to see.” She looked over to Troy, “But I’m serious, whatever this thing is seems to actually have destroyed, dissipated, or driven away the Dark in a certain location.”

  Troy nodded, stepping back up, “So the conclusion she reached, and that me and Kiara reached as well, is that this object can, in some capacity that we do not yet understand, destroy or at least chase away the Dark. And since this objective is the entire point of the existence of the Dream Syndicate, that’s a pretty groundbreaking discovery.”

  Iri shook her head and whistled next to Seth, “You got that right.” Troy nodded, and Kiara broke in, “So you guys realize what this means, right? This must be the ‘sacred object’
Lyn mentioned, the one that we need to get to the Heirs to enable them to destroy the Dark once and for all.” Seth nodded; he couldn’t believe how this was all coming together – it did seem very lucky of them to have crossed paths with this group possessing this “Dreamcatcher.”

  Troy continued, “So we’ll keep investigating this, and we intend to try it out for ourselves, but it seems like me and Kiara’s end of the mission is complete. We’ll contact you morning after next with confirmation of whether this ‘Dreamcatcher’ worked as Sky described, but until then we’re going to go on the assumption that this was the object Kiara and I were looking for.”

  He shook his head, laughing a bit, “I have to admit, this is the luckiest thing I’ve ever seen, us coming across the very people who found the object on Apathy, of all places, and them finding us exactly as they wanted to. I mean, we could’ve kept searching the North forever, and not found the thing. I’ll have to talk with Lyn about the information he’s been giving us; he told us to search the North, after all.” Seth nodded.

  “Alright”, Troy finished, “We’re gonna let you go. Keep working on brining the Heirs around. As soon as you’re one hundred percent sure that they’re the Heirs, which you may be by now, create and execute a plan to bring them to us. Depending on what’s convenient, we can meet you somewhere if you give us enough time.” Seth and Iri nodded. “Consider it done”, Iri said, “I have to say, this is really crazy. It seems like fate that it’s all working out so perfectly.”

  Troy laughed as he let the image fade out, “Fate, huh? I prefer to think that we deserved this. What is it they say – luck is where preparation meets opportunity? If that’s the case, keep working hard guys. Our day is coming.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Lyght knew they’d come for him that afternoon. Or he’d hoped so, anyway.

  He was out in the training yard behind the base of Zone Zero with his classmates, working on sword drills with a blunted weapon on a training dummy. At this late stage of the program, the sergeants and Lyn were training them on combining Dreamcasting and traditional fighting techniques. Lyn sat in a chair against the wall of the base, manipulating the training dummies to spin and move around, and even attack with the wooden swords sewed to their hands. The exercise was actually more difficult than it looked, because Lyn was able to make the lifeless targets as fast and quick as a real opponent, and do this for the whole classes’ targets at the same time.

  His level of ability truly astounded Lyght, but he had no time to think about it now as the dummy he was fighting danced in under his guard and cut at his legs. Lyght used a touch of Dreamcasting to speed his jump – the only way to avoid the vicious cut from the lifeless minion – and sliced at the dummy’s head as he came back down, which of course was parried. Lyght began to twist to throw another cut when his dummy fell lifeless to the ground, like the strings controlling it had been cut.

  Looking over, Lyght saw a girl standing in conversation with Lyn. It was the messenger girl of the King that Lyght had met a few times before – Lyaness was her name. At the dinner with the Decimader Vuruman, the King had promised Lyght and Mikael that he would send this girl Lyaness to collect them the next time he wished to speak with them. Well, the girl had come to collect Mikael this morning, explaining that for whatever reason the King wanted to meet with the two of the separately. Lyght took it in stride, but to tell the truth he’d been unable to truly focus in on his training all day as he anticipated getting the call to go up and speak with the King, just as Mikael had done this morning. Well, it looked like the time had come.

  Lyght walked over to Lyn and Lyaness, throwing his blunted training sword in the dust for the sergeants to collect later. He had to wonder yet again at the Legend’s ridiculously high ability – he was able to control and actively fight with the dozens of training dummies all while holding a conversation with Lyaness and greeting Lyght as he walked up, out of breath from the exercise.

  “Good job out there Lyght, but make sure you don’t get too aggressive. That’s how an enemy can get in and tag you.” Lyght nodded slightly bitterly; he could feel the bruises throbbing underneath his shirt where the wooden sword had rammed home. He was glad it was only made of wood.

  The Legend motioned back towards the general direction of the city and turned back towards his brawling students, “You can go. I’ll see you tomorrow, Lyght.” Lyght nodded and turned to walk off the training field with Lyaness, heading towards the city and the Tower of Triumph, where the upcoming meeting was located. They walked through the forest for a few minutes in silence, Lyght growing a bit cold now as the heat of training wore off. Still wearing a sleeveless shirt and cutoff pants from training, Lyght suddenly realized that he was in no condition to meet the King. Getting a bit self-conscious, Lyght was relieved to find that he’d thought to pick up his bag on the way out. He unzipped it, taking out the Legion cape and tying it around the base of his neck. That was all he could really do, but he hoped he looked more presentable. As he was tying it on, Lyaness engaged him in conversation.

  “So, I’ve got a question for you.”

  Lyght looked up at her, tying the cloak in front of his neck and tightening it. “Yeah? Fire away.”

  Lyght noticed that the girl had her hood up, as usual. He wondered why she did that, it wasn’t that cold. Before he could ask though, the girl named Lyaness looked up, thinking, “Hmmm… how to say it? I guess I’m wondering; who are you anyway that’s so important that you get to meet with the King of the Dreamscape regularly? I mean, no offense, but usually only the most important and influential people in the capital city of Glory ever get to meet with him. My father happens to be a senior Senate member, you see, which is the only reason I got this job. Not that I particularly enjoy it, but that’s a story for another time. So – and pardon my bluntness – who are you anyway?”

  Lyght laughed, “Deep question. I’ll answer that question if you answer it right after me.” The girl nodded, so Lyght said, “Alright, well…” He couldn’t think of anything to say for a few moments, raising a hand to the back of his neck and laughing awkwardly. Seeing Lyaness looking puzzled, Lyght tried to find the words to honestly answer her question. It was more difficult than he’d anticipated. Who was he, anyway?

  “Well, I guess I’m just an ordinary guy from the village of Kona in the Hope domain. Other than the fact that I’m a Dreamcaster, there’s nothing particularly special about me. As you might have guessed, my goal my whole life… more or less… has been to join the Legion as an official member. I don’t really want to go into it, but that was my dad’s dream in the first place, and well… he died trying to achieve it. But anyway, Lyn showed up at me and Mikael’s eighteenth birthday party and invited us here. So I came.”

  Lyaness frowned, “Well, yeah, that makes sense. But it’s a kind of similar story to other people at the Academy. Why do you get to meet our vaunted King, and they don’t?”

  The answer clicked into Lyght’s head as he remembered, “Oh, yeah. That. Well, I don’t know that much about it, but the King told Mikael and I at the dinner that he discovered something a few years back predicting that the first two Dreamcasters to emerge out of the Hope domain, which we are, would play a crucial role in defeating some dangerous enemy to the Dreamscape… or something like that. Sounds crazy, right? And don’t ask, because I don’t really know what he means either. I’m sorry if that answer is kind of vague, but that’s all I know.” Lyght didn’t know why he was apologizing, but he felt naturally inclined to give her an explanation. He couldn’t see why that would be, as he hardly knew her, but felt like he did know her well at the same time… although that didn’t really make any sense.

  They were out of the Zone now, heading towards the Heart of the city and the shining diamond tower that Lyght could already see from here. Lyght turned the question back around on Lyaness, “So, you said you’d tell me a bit more about yourself. How’d you get such an… exotic name anyway?” Lyaness laughed, punching him on
the arm, “Because my parents gave it to me, idiot.” Lyght drew back like it hurt him, but of course it didn’t. He put his hands up, “Okay, I surrender, you win.” She laughed at his acting, but he had to wonder.

  What am I doing?

  Lyaness took a few moments herself before answering, “Well, who I am is a pretty long question to answer. I told you that I’m the daughter – an only child – of a powerful Senate member who always wanted a son. I’m, as you know, the messenger for a King who, and don’t be too shocked here, I really don’t like. Ironic, right? I’m tasking with carrying his messages, but I don’t really give a damn what he says. Why? Because if you’ve lived in Glory as long as I have, around the power circles that run this land, you begin to see how flawed the system really is.”

  Lyaness laughed a little bitterly, “Look, you have half the population – the North – who live in a broken society because for some bizarre reason the King never focuses on them. Their land is run variously by warlords and corrupt politicians, and their quality of life is terrible. You have the other half of the population in the South who have no say in any of the decisions made by the government, and who are forced to go to sleep all at an exact time by some mysterious supernatural force. And that seems right to people? That seems like the ‘Hero’ of the Dreamscape living up to his name? No. I don’t hate the King, you see. He seems like a nice enough guy. I’m just very, very disappointed in him. The people deserve better.”

  Lyght kept walking alongside her as they entered the Belt, startled by her words. He suddenly realized that he’d never really met anyone who so openly opposed Decimader Vuruman. He found it ironic that someone close to the King would be the first one he heard really speak out. Although if he thought about it, he guessed this made sense in a way, since Lyaness would be one of the people who knew him best.