Minerva

I looked around the dining room of the apartment I had spent the first thirteen years of my life in quiet reverence. Everything had been faithfully recreated, only it was brighter than I remembered it being. The dull white walls had been repainted a bright spring green. The grungy, gray carpet was all but gone. In its place was a sleek wooden floor. Even the old dusty A/C unit, which never really worked, had been fixed and was now running at full blast. Most importantly, Eleanor and my mother were here, as if nothing had happened to them.

I realized that the scene before me looked so familiar because it was exactly how I imagined it would be if nothing had happened ten years ago. It was the future that could have been, down to the very details. And that uncanny resemblance to the image I had in mind was what made me uneasy.

For there was no one dead or alive who knew the details of this dream.

Everyone else was still frozen in time.

Eleanor alone was able to move.

“What wrong, Titus?” she said curtly.

To see her alive again in the flesh was not something I wanted to walk away from, even if it was fake. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Eleanor standing before me was not Eleanor but only someone pretending to be her. There was something about the pretense that made it impossible to say nothing as much as I wanted to enjoy the dream.

I tried my best to keep a level voice.

“This is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me, friend,” I said.

“Of course,” Eleanor said. “It’s our family, after all.”

“The date is correct as is the time of day,” I continued, “We did have eggs, bacon, and hash browns that morning before we were attacked and dragged into the nightmare that followed. The only thing different is that everyone is ten years older than they were, but I'm sure that was by design.”

If Eleanor knew I was calling her out, she pretended not to notice. But at the moment, she seemed to be at a loss for what to say. If anything, she looked confused that I was able to see through the illusion.

“Titus, let’s just go back to our meal,” she said. “Pretend like this never happened, just for a moment.”

I bit my lip, not trusting that I would be able to keep it together if I didn’t.

“You even knew the names Eleanor wanted for her children, you monster. There’s only a handful of people who would know, and most of them are dead.”

I looked dead into Eleanor’s eyes. She kept her gaze steady, though she did grit her teeth before relaxing them again.

"Who are you?" I asked.

“You should go wash up,” she said dangerously. "We're going to go Sequoia today, remember?"

I nearly yelped, because the word Sequoia triggered a memory I thought I had long forgotten about, the trip Eleanor and I never got to make because we were forcibly dragged into the world of Nivandor.

“Enough, illusionist!” I said, breathing out sharply. “Let’s talk face-to-face.”

Eleanor paused. Then she reached for the golden ring on her left hand. Her fingers trembled as she reluctantly removed it.

At once, the illusion began to fall away. The dining room, mother, and all the children vanished from sight like smoke on a windy day. They were quickly replaced by a circular garden encircled by a low stone wall.

The garden was filled with rope-like vines covered with long, twisted thorns. There were so many thorns on the vines that I wondered how I was going to leave the garden without having to step on them. The large rotting stump of a once-proud tree sat where the dining room table was, the epicenter of the thorns.

Beyond the garden was an impenetrable void that stretched out as far as the eye could see. The air was dead, dark, and still, as if nothing had stirred it for years. There were no stars in the sky, no moon to be seen. The only light I could see came from a ceramic pitcher attached to a golden staff cradled in the right hand of a young black-haired woman that sat where Eleanor stood moments before. The light was a warm, ghostly light, much like that of a fireplace.

The woman was dressed in a white linen dress that fell past her ankles. The dress was trimmed with fine gold. The woman was definitely shorter than Eleanor by at least half a foot, though her long hair only made her look even shorter. She appeared to be in her early twenties, just like Priscilla and me. She was glaring at me, her fierce brown eyes piercing my very soul.

“I spent six months preparing that illusion,” she said, clearly annoyed with me. “Would it have killed you to enjoy it for, I don't know, half an hour?”

Her voice was deep and velvety, nothing like Eleanor’s bright, cheerful voice. She sounded like she was in her late-thirties though she looked no older than Priscilla.

I looked around hoping to see if Eleanor was still here.

She was gone.

“I’m sorry," I said. "But I don’t have any reason to trust you."

The woman sighed deeply, almost as if she was genuinely disappointed.

“Very well,” she said. “I am Iris, Host of the Nightmare. You know what that means, don’t you?”

I gulped.

The Host of a Nightmare was essentially its administrator, meaning she had the power to alter the nightmare as she saw fit. Creating powerful illusions was but one of the various privileges given to a Host.

“Ah, you do know what a Host is,” Iris said, laughing heartily. “Don’t worry, I am a merciful Host, though I would have liked it if you saw my little illusion through to its end.”

“I’m not going to lie, I thought about it," I admitted. "But this isn't my first nightmare.”

Iris laughed again, this time louder.

“That's correct. You have faced many, many nightmares before this one, all in the name of becoming a cheon-sa," she said. "It's quite impressive how you threw yourself into those nightmares voluntarily knowing full well the pain you would have to endure. It's almost as if you want to become stronger through conquering those nightmares so you would never let someone down the way you let her down."

I summoned the Mocles Saber.

Eleanor's death has always been a sore spot, and today was no exception.

Iris raised her eyebrows but didn’t seem frightened in the slightest. Instead, she took her staff and shook it at me disdainfully.

"You know," she said with a smile. "It's a bit strange you still remember so much about your outside life. You shouldn't have remembered anything about those nightmares. We are in a Sealed Nightmare after all."

My eyes widened.

In a Sealed Nightmare, memories of the Outside World were sealed away from you while you were inside the nightmare and could only be reclaimed through certain means, hence the name.

"My guess is that you entered the dream through some unorthodox way that allowed you to bypass the memory censor,” she said. "Though how exactly that would have happened, I don't have a clue where to begin. Maybe Morpheus had more trouble than he said he would."

I remembered how Priscilla had poisoned me with her wing, how the one word she was able to say before she lost consciousness was “nightmare.” The poison must have been a modified version of the dream toxin she had been inflicted with seeing how I was now stuck in the dream with her.

I was certain that she had been affected by some kind of dream toxin since that was the one kind of poison that Seraphs had difficulty purging from their body because of how quickly they took effect. Still, the toxin must have been potent since Priscilla had received extensive training specifically on fighting dream toxins.

“Tell me, Titus,” Iris said eagerly. “How did you enter this dream?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I said. “You clearly know who my lord is. You managed to sneak an assassin into the Dawn Sanctuary, no small feat. You had the opportunity to kill both of us. Instead, you dragged us into this nightmare with a dream toxin powerful enough to take down a Seraph.”

Iris looked down at her nails.

“You see," she said, "your lord was the only remaining Seraph loyal to the Dawn. That was a threat the Order could not ignore any longer.”

“Ah, I had a feeling you guys were involved,” I said.

The Order of the Dragon Knights, or the Order, for short, was a rival mage guild, full of the ambitious and the morally bankrupt. They hated us more than any other guild simply because we were the only ones able to match them in strength and in numbers.

I knew that Priscilla had been a target of them for some time, but as far as I knew, the Dawn was inaccessible to them. The fact that they had attacked the very moment I left Priscilla’s side on the very day we planned to visit Nivandor told me they had someone on the inside who had been watching us for some time.

“The Order wanted to kill your lord and be done with her, as did I,” she continued, “but my boss proposed an alternative--to imprison your lord in this nightmare where she could live out a full life in the span of a few minutes."

Few minutes? I thought. Maybe I will be able to escape the dream before we hit the ground.

"And when the dream ends?" I asked.

Iris smiled.

"The poison coursing through your lord’s veins will kill her.”

“You have a poison that can kill a Seraph, a being essentially immune to poisons.”

“Yes, we are the Order, after all. Second to none, especially you boring, self-righteous Watchers at the Dawn.”

She had a point. If there was anyone capable of creating such a poison, it would be a power-hungry guild like them. But even then, creating a toxin capable of shutting a Seraph would require the aid of another Seraph.

“There’s only one person I know capable of creating such a poison,” I said. “But she would never stoop to work with the likes of you.”

Iris raised her eyebrows.

"You really don't think the Marchioness would be interested in a task involving her estranged daughter?”