Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 4 Days 1 Hour

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

Nic staggered through the desert. His aura was running low, and he'd put as much distance between himself and the Guardian as he could. His best hope now was that the twin doses of poison would restrain it from following him, or that Sofia maintaining a barrier of aura around the curse inside him would prevent it from using that curse to track him.

A few seconds of battle had left Nic missing an eye and nearly dead. But in those precious few seconds, he'd given himself as many chances to make it through the night in one piece as he could.

The immediate threat was the cold, icy pain radiating from the cut the scythe had left on his arm. That pain was like a dark pit in the earth. One wrong step and Nic would be swallowed up by it.

He could hear whispered voices calling his name. Time and time again he found himself beginning to slip into a daydream that carried him back to some memory, only to manage to snap himself back away before he was swallowed by the past. It was like trying to stay awake when you were truly exhausted, and catching your eyes slipping shut time and time again.

The wound wasn't just assaulting his body but his mind as well.

“Sofia? What did that bastard do to me…” He groaned.

“A soul attack, Nicolas. It will eat away at you until we deal with it.” Her voice sounded strained. She was working with his cultivation, rotating and shaping the energy within his body with a cold, clear strength that felt entirely foreign to Nic’s fiery method of cultivation.

“How about… We call the arm a loss and cut it off?” It would only hurt. This was much worse than pain.

“No, it’s too late for that. The only way out is to fight the soul affliction head on. You’ll need to find a safe place and let it drag you into dreamspace. From there…” She paused. “From there I’ll try to guide you. But the important thing is to hold on to yourself. To not forget who you are.”

Nic was barely capable of processing her words. His whole body was numb and shaking.

He chose a half-buried cave entrance and dug the sand away. His danger sense was reading nothing within, so he toppled down into a bed of rough grit and tried to cover himself, burying his body and only leaving space to breathe.

With slow, unsteady breath, he curled his body up.

Memories crept up on him and in seconds, Nic was dreaming.

---

It was a lifetime ago.

Three suns hung in the sky, each of them old and red, almost out of life. The heat of the day was dispersed by a deep moon-white mist that hung over massive landscapes of pale bone. Ancient skulls half-covered by earth stood like hills and mountains.

Nic was in a dream. He knew he was, although a spider-like influence on his mind was trying to steal that knowledge away from him.

And he knew where the dream had taken him.

This was the Desolate Expanse. The second-to-last of the dream-realm trials every child in d23 faced.

The one where he’d ruined everything.

Just seeing it again made his heart seize up with dread.

“Hey, Nicolas!” A cheerful voice called to him from the top of a hill. He turned and his heart dropped like a stone.

Rufus Tawley. His best friend. Red-headed, bright-smiled, with huge shoulders and a scar that stretched his lips into a permanent grin that would’ve been hideous if it didn’t match his personality so well. He was coming down the hill, hacking away thorny vines with a machete. “Are you alright? You look dazed.”

This wasn’t just a memory.

It hadn’t happened this way.

When it had happened the first time, Nic had found Tawley fighting a giant carnivorous slug. He could even see the scratches and slime on Tawley’s arm, as if Nic hadn’t been there to help him this time.

“Ayy, chucklefuck!” Tawley punched him hard in the chest. Nic swung back, but didn’t stop staring. “Whatsamatter? Freaked out? Don’t be. We’re gonna take care of you Nic.”

Take care of him. What a sad notion.

Nic had been the youngest, and the best at fighting. The one everyone could see had a bright future, a shooting star. He’d fucked everything up trying to live up to that promise.

He wrapped his arms around Tawley and squeezed tight.

Nic knew he was in a dream. But he wanted it to be real.

---

They found Kyto and Markus together, fighting a huge boy with a shaved head and sharp, glowing eyes. A cultivator from another world. Every blow of his fists sent out shockwaves as palm-strike after palm-strike made the air shiver and bend.

But he was seventeen. And four against one was a brutal, bloody uphill struggle.

In the first timeline - the real one, Nic had to keep reminding himself - he’d won with a throwing knife to the throat. There were no weapons allowed here from the outside world. Everyone was given their choice of mundane blades and other killing tools by the System as they entered the Desolate Expanse.

He’d chosen a sword and a belt of knives.

This time Nic didn’t wait for the fight to get desperate. From the moment he saw the cultivator slam a fist into Markus and send the tall, skinny boy stumbling, Nic broke into a run. As he hurtled down the hillside he howled in anger and the cultivator turned.

A smug grin crossed his face for a split second - and then Nic’s blades began to fill the air. One thrown knife after another hurtled towards that ugly bald mug, and the cultivator was forced to deflect a storm of flying steel.

Until Nic was on top of him. Nic dropped low, skidded across the ground, and slashed his knife through the back of the bastard’s leg. He screamed and dropped, and Nic was on top of him. One arm grabbed him around the throat and another brought the blood-stained knife slamming down into his spine, again and again until Nic was soaked in blood.

And the limp body below dissolved into a puff of mist.

Nobody really died in the Dreamland. That was reserved for the world outside.

But the more you slew the more the System would take notice. If a mortal like him somehow took a place in the top ten thousand, that would mean a lifetime of training resources and luxury.

That had been his goal.

That had been why he’d fucked everything up.

“Nic? You alright?” Markus grasped him by the shoulder and pulled him up. He was a spectacled giant, huge and ungainly and never quite sure of his own strength. Chestnut hair and blocky features rounded out the sense that the boy had been shaped from clay rather than born. “You’re uh… shaking…”

Nic was. His whole body was trembling hard.

He couldn’t lose them again.

He knew he’d been here before - but he’d started to believe that maybe, somehow, it was the first time that was a dream.

No, a nightmare.

---

They fought. They camped under the open stars. They chased small wildlife through the thorns and ended up scratched to hell for a rabbit with barely any meat on its bones. The next day a trio of sisters ambushed them using crossbows. A single lucky bolt took out Kyto, poor scrawny Kyto who was fast and smart but not strong enough or brave enough to fight well.

They spent the rest of the day hiding in the treetops, waiting for the sisters to pass under so they could drop down and finish the fight.

It worked.

Day after day passed like that. Markus took a hard axe-blow to the shoulder and couldn’t fight anymore, and after a few hours, he was groaning so miserably that Tawley put a knife through his throat and sent him home. It was only a dreamland, after all.

But Tawley looked shaky as he turned back to the fire.

“God Nic. You’ve fought like a demon. Are you…” He paused, and the fire flickered over his face. “It’s alright if we don’t make it, you know. To the top thousand. There must be millions here.”

Nic didn’t move. He was staring into the fires, into the coal-bright remains of the burning wood. “I’m fine.” His arms were crossed over his knees, his chin rested atop his arms.

“Okay, okay. Because you’ve seemed… well, dangerous, the last few days. Like a wild animal...”

Nic scratched his nose. His whole body felt strange to him these days. Like it wasn’t really his, except when he fought. And when he fought…

Every muscle. Every fibre of his being. Every part of him sung with fury and the need to win.

Like a wild animal.

“And I’m just thinking… It’s okay. Your future isn’t on the line here. God Nic, fighting like you do, you could walk away now and still be recruited to a dozen legions. It’d be… well it would be more than nice to be part of the Marchesa’s Legion…”

Tawley smiled, the scar over his lip exposing a little too much teeth, a red slice of gum. “But you’ll be fine. You don’t need this. So don’t break yourself.”

“I don’t need this.” Nic actually surprised himself when he spoke. “But you do.”

Tawley paused, and his smile faltered. “I can take care of myself, Nic. I know I’m not as good with a sword as you are. But my failings are my own, and I’m not- I can’t let myself be babysat by my younger brother, can I?”

They weren’t blood. But they might as well have been.

“Tawley…” Nic said. “What’s the point of being good at fighting if I can’t protect a few people along the way?”

And Tawley didn’t have anything to say to that.

Nic still knew he’d been here before. He had two sets of memories, laid over one another. But he refused to believe that other timeline. The terrible things that had happened. With his whole heart, he wanted this one to be real.

---

Day five was when disaster struck.

Nic’s entire body was tense, almost shaking, as they walked down the road. Ruined towns and villages full of tangling green weeds and dead bodies surrounded the roadside. The trees were dark and skeletal.

And down the road, coming up the opposite way, were five boys. They were well-dressed. They had refined, well-cut hair and trimmed nails, with a level of poise that didn’t seem like they had spent five days in the wilderness.

But they were nothing but the lowest, ugliest trash on the face of the earth.

The leader of them was a tall, blonde-haired boy with a beak of a nose and cold eyes above it. He walked with a staff slung over his shoulders, and he smiled with a dark amusement as he set his eyes on Nic and Tawley.

“Hey, you there. Do you know why you’re the luckiest little idiots in this valley?” His voice was musical and taunting. “You’re lucky because you get to die by my hand.”

Nic reached out a hand and stopped Tawley as he reached for his sword.

He knew what would happen that way.

They would fight and they would lose, hard. They’d be pushed to the ground and beaten until their bones broke and their faces were pulp.

Nic remembered the leader leaning in. Smiling. He remembered twisting free and slamming his hidden knife into that sneering face.

Nic remembered learning, later, what he’d done. That he’d killed the son of d23’s governor and disqualified him from the dreamrealm.

It was only a single, clumsy stab that got lucky.

And it had cost Nic everyone he loved.

His hand gripped down, preventing Tawley from drawing his weapon.

“Nicolas…”

“Just… don’t do it Taws…” Nic’s voice was low and hissing. “Not this time. You’re right. I don’t need this.”