Shelter from the Rain

I thought about her question for a moment.

I thought about telling her details from our last moments together in the outside world, how she had eaten seven fish pastries for dinner while I had only eaten five. Then I remembered she had been down in the dream for seven years. Chances were she didn’t remember a thing from that day.

I had to tell her something she would remember even if the entire world fell apart.

I knew exactly what I was going to tell her.

“When I first met you, I hated you so much, you know that?” I said.

“Famous last words,” she said raising me higher into the air with her wing. I was now twelve feet off the ground.

“Hear me out!” I begged.

She stopped but kept me raised. A fall from here would definitely break something.

“The first time we met was at the Rosen Bridge ten years ago, you remember? My mom had just rescued you from the Order. But someone had poisoned her, badly. Kind of hard to believe since she had a Remnant that could stop time. But she died right in front of our eyes. She died to bring you to our guild.”

Priscilla was as silent as the woods around us. I continued, feeling ill-at-ease.

“Do you remember what her last words were?”

“No, I don’t.”

“‘Don’t hate her for this,’” I said, shaking my head. “Can you believe that? ‘Don’t hate her?’ The girl who had just cost my mother her life?”

Priscilla tightened the grip on her wing, almost enough to crush my bones. I grit my teeth to keep myself from screaming. I was trying to make her mad in a way that only I could to remind her of who I was. She hadn’t fired her death ray just yet, so my plan seemed to be working so far.

I continued.

“And I hated you for years. I hated how you always got first priority in class registrations while I had to brawl with the others for whatever was leftover. I hated how they showered you with financial aid while I had to work full-time to make ends meet despite the sacrifices my mother made for the guild. I hated how things seemed to just come naturally to you while I had to work extra hard just to keep up, and even then I always second best. During those years, I asked myself how different things would be if you hadn’t shown up that day, if my mom hadn’t decided your life was worth more than hers.”

“What’s your point?!”

I knew I was being cruel. I could hear the hurt in her voice even as she threatened to turn my skeleton to dust. But I needed to make sure she remembered what lay at the foundation of our friendship.

“My point is that despite how terribly our friendship started,” I groaned. “We became friends, good friends, friends willing to die for one another. Friends who swore an oath to keep each other safe until the end of time. Don’t you remember? ‘I will be your shield-’”

“-and I will be your sword,” she said, frowning.

“Yes! Exactly that! It took a while, but after years of brooding, I finally understood why my mother said what she did."

Priscilla continued to glare at me, not giving me any sign that she was buying my story. I knew my next words had to count.

“She thought you were someone worth fighting for."

Priscilla maintained a stone-cold expression, giving no hint as to if my words were was getting through to her or not.

"And you? Do you think I'm someone worth fighting for?" she said curtly.

"Couldn't be happier than being your cheon-sa!" I said with a smile.

I must have said the wrong thing because the orbs of light continued to grow in intensity as they slowly began to circle around me like a school of ghostly sharks. Before long, they were spinning so quickly that I could no longer distinguish one orb from another. They were now a ring of deadly light too bright to look at.

There were stories of people hearing heavenly music moments before they were vaporized by the Ray of Annihilation. I certainly heard the humming crescendo like a symphony approaching its finale, but it was anything but a heavenly sound.

I began to speak as quickly as I could.

"I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe from your assassin! I really am! We both know the penalty for a cheon-sa who lets their lord die is death. Do as you see fit, you always joke about how you wouldn't mind replacing me with someone else. Just believe me when I say that I’m the real Titus and I would love to hear all about what's happened in the last seven years! I’m sorry! I just want to talk things out!”

Iris! I thought. Now would be a great time for an intervention.

When she didn’t respond, I scoffed.

Of course, I thought. That’s what I get for trusting a stranger!

Just when it looked like Priscilla was to fire off the ray of annihilation and erase me from existence, she released me from her wing.

"You haven't changed a bit," she said as I dropped like a meteor.

I was able to break most of my fall with a hasty kinetic barrier. I still hit the ground pretty hard. I could have sworn I heard something crack.

As I lay on the cold marble ground, too sore to move, I laughed as I realized that I was alive.

Then I began to cough up blood.

I rolled over onto my back, closed my eyes, and tried my best not to move. I heard Priscilla slowly walk up to me. When I reopened my eyes, I saw her extending her hand toward me.

I grit my teeth in anger.

“You sure I’m not a phantasm?” I wheezed. “Because I’m not sure you’re the real Priscilla.”

Priscilla removed the monocle from around her neck and tossed it to me. I managed to catch it with the edge of my fingertips before it hit the ground.

“See for yourself,” she said.

I channeled a bit of magic into the monocle as I gingerly raised it to my right eye. Sure enough, its golden fractals reappeared on its lens as the monocle came to life. I looked at Priscilla through the activated lens and saw absolutely nothing different about her.

"It's broken, like my back," I said.

“No, it's not. Can you see me?”

“Yes."

“Good. You wouldn’t be able to if I was a phantasm.”

I lowered the monocle from my eye. The fractals disappeared as soon as I stopped channeling magic into the lens.

"You said it's lied to you before," I said, coughing up more blood.

Priscilla smiled.

"If I was a phantasm, you'd be already dead," she said.

I stared at the monocle resting in my trembling hands. As much as I didn't want to admit it, she was right.

Phantasms were hostile entities within a nightmare that often took on the form of someone you trusted. While they were masters of deception, because they weren’t human they were rather single-minded in their approach.

Once they felt their target had their guard down, they would strike, which is probably what happened with Priscilla when she ran into the phantasm masquerading as me.

Priscilla held her hand out for me to take again. Instead, I wordlessly lifted the monocle up toward her. She took it and gingerly replaced it around her neck.

I closed my eyes and tried my best to relax, but my back was hurting too much to ignore. I grit my teeth and tried to tough out the pain, but the severity of the pain told me it was not going to go away anytime soon. At the very least, she had broken several of my ribs and injured my back. Priscilla had been rough to me before, but this was the worst I have ever seen her. I had put up with it before because I was her guardian angel, but this time, I was not okay with it. This time, she had crossed the line.

As I thought about all the other places I could find employment on Nivandor, I felt someone place their hand on my forehead. The rain suddenly stopped pouring onto my face. Pain slowly began to leave my body.

When I reopened my eyes, Priscilla was kneeling beside me. Her hand rested on my forehead as she used her magic to repair the broken parts of my body. A warm feeling filled my entire body as bone and tissue slowly began to knit themselves back together. There was a steady decrease in the overall pain I felt with every passing minute. Priscilla’s wing created a large canopy over both of us as she worked, shielding us from the relentless rain.

Gone was the look of rage on her face. If anything, she looked a little scared.

"Can you believe that the first time I found you in the dream, I was so glad that I forgot to check if it was really you?" she said. "But now I know how to tell the difference between you and the phantasms."

"They don't have broken ribs?" I said.

Priscilla slapped me gently on the side of my temple before catching herself.

"You won't hit back," she said. "Even if it costs you your life."

This was probably the closest thing I was going to get to an apology, so I let her continue to heal me without protest. When my pain was mostly gone and my body mostly repaired, Priscilla removed her hand and stood up from the ground. Rain began to pour down on me again as she removed our canopy from over my head.

“When you’re feeling it, come down to the lodge,” she said. “I’ll introduce you to the others, the ones that are left.”

“The others?”

“I didn’t survive down here alone, silly,” she replied. “There are too many monsters for that, even for a Seraph like me. Though I have been doing most of the fighting for our little band of survivors. That’s all going to change, mind you, now that you’re here.”

I flashed her a thumbs-up as I slowly sat up. I felt good, better than before she had broken my bones.

"Not bad," I said.

"Not bad?"

"Please, you just broke my bones."

She sighed as she offered her hand for me to take. This time, I took it. As I stood up, the rain softened to a drizzle and the wind died down to a soft breeze. It was still cold as death, but Priscilla's moved her wing to shield me from the worst of it. We began to make our way down the stairs side-by-side.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You can thank me when we’re safe in the Golden City,” she said. “We’ve still got to get through the guardian of the temple since you weren’t it.”

I looked back at the temple behind us. I recalled the massive butterfly engraving and the thundering roar behind the stone doors. I began to imagine what kind of monster lay behind that door, if it would be something we could realistically take down.

I thought about how she had nearly killed me based on mistaken identity.

I closed my eyes.

Don’t tell your lord about me, Iris said intently.

I jumped up in the air, much to Priscilla's annoyance.

“You alright?” she asked.

Her life depends on it, Iris said in a tone that sent shivers down my spine.

While this was likely was warning against something in the nightmare I wasn't aware of yet, the way she said it almost felt like a threat.

“Yes,” I replied. “Just trying to get over the fact that my good friend of ten years nearly killed me.”

Priscilla rolled her eyes.

“Now, fill me in on everything I’ve forgotten,” she said. “I remember bits and pieces, but not enough to keep me from going crazy.”

“There’s a lot to cover since we’ve known each other for ten years,” I said. “Anything, in particular, you want to know?”

Priscilla paused, almost as if she was embarrassed to ask her question.

“We weren’t lovers or anything, right?” she said.

I almost laughed, because she made it very clear years ago that she didn’t have feelings for me. But when I saw the look on her face, I knew she was asking a serious question.

“Not at all,” I replied. “I’m just your friend and your servant.”

“I figured,” she said as she shoved me away. I nearly tripped down the last few steps before I managed to catch myself with the help of my time magic.

"Whoa, there," I laughed.

But Priscilla stormed down the stairs past me and marched into the muddy forest alone.

I knew I had hurt her feelings.

“Wait,” I said, “you didn’t spend the last seven years thinking I was your-”

Priscilla abruptly stopped walking.

“No!” she replied. “And now I see why I never liked you. You said you were my servant, correct? We are never to speak of this again.”

Before I could ask her more, Priscilla vanished deeper into the woods. The rain decided to pick up at that moment. I stood there quietly, dumbfounded at what had just happened.

You told her the truth, huh, Iris said. You could have played along, you scoundrel. Especially now that a certain good-looking dragon knight is no longer in your way.

“Will you shut up?” I snapped, glaring up at the sky, angrier than I wanted to admit.

Iris giggled but said nothing more.

For a second, I was baffled as to how she knew that about me. Then I remembered there were other things she knew about me that I hadn't told a soul about. She must have access to some kind of protocol coded into the nightmare that allowed her to access my mind at will.

Delving into the minds of those placed within a nightmare without consent was a war crime and punished by nothing short of life imprisonment or, as was more common, death. But that didn't seem to be much of a deterrent for my Host. I shouldn't have been too surprised. She was an associate of Hilda, after all.

At this point, I accepted that Iris probably knew everything about my personal life, down to my deepest, darkest secrets. On the off-chance that I still had secrets to keep, I had to figure out how to safeguard them from my prying benefactor.

Iris was guiding me toward me something specific, that much was certain. What that something was bothered me since I had no way to know whose benefit it was for, whether she was genuinely trying to help us escape the dream out of the goodness of her heart or if she was having the time of her life toying around with the pieces on her side of the board in some grand game I knew precious little about.

But, she had, in the end, kept her deal in finding my friend.

I now had to fulfill mine.

Iris was right about one thing-I still had some feelings for Priscilla, ones I thought I had extinguished long ago.

I picked up the Mocles Saber from the ground. I noted that my ankle-length boots were utterly ruined. I had a feeling Iris wasn't going to replace them anytime soon.

I began to trudge through the mud after my lord.

Hopefully, she hadn’t changed her mind about sparing my life.