Chapter 2.2: In a Better World

I had revealed who my patron was to the one person who could not find out about her.

Think of something quick!

But my mind blanked. I held my breath, cursing my bad luck, uncertain if Priscilla drop dead now that she had heard Iris’s name. But after a few tense moments passed, nothing significant happened.

I frowned.

Perhaps Iris had lied to me.

Or, as was more likely the case, I had messed up big time.

Iris had made such a big deal about keeping her identity a secret that I couldn’t help but feel that there was some unforeseen consequence we would have to deal with later thanks to my blunder, one I was not looking forward to finding out about.

“What’s wrong?” Priscilla asked. “You look like you just killed someone.”

“About that,” I yelped. “The girl that’s helping us? Her name’s Marlette, not Iris. Iris is the name of one of my friends from Earth before I found out about magic and everything.”

Priscilla scowled.

“If you say so,” she said, taking another bite of her ice cream. “Marlette is fixing up our bodies in the overworld as we speak. Her orders for us were to enjoy this memory and relax.”

“A dream within a dream.”

“Something like that. The girl seemed nice enough. Don’t know if we can trust her, though.”

Priscilla’s eyes were glued to her ice cream. Her movements were curt and deliberate. She was probably stressed about our situation, but she didn’t give any indication that she knew I was lying about Iris’s name.

I breathed an inward sigh of relief.

That was too close. That can’t happen again.

The activity in the ice cream parlor had lulled to a quiet buzz. Apart from a handful of individual customers eating their frozen desserts at the tables lined up by the glass walls, there was no one leaving or entering the place. Even the cashier had retired to the kitchen and was no longer standing idly by the register.

I reminded myself that what I saw was an illusion of Iris's making and that the illusion was probably limited in what it portrayed. Yet I was intrigued at how immersive the illusion was otherwise. Such was the immersion that if I wasn't aware that what I saw was an illusion to begin with, I doubt I would have been able to notice the difference at all.

A twang of regret hit me as I realized that this was the level of reality I could have experienced in the first illusion Iris had shown me, the one with Eleanor, her kids, and my mother. Had I seen the illusion through, I might have been able to spend that extra day with Eleanor I always told myself I would give the world to have.

I looked back to Priscilla, who was working away at the triple portion of sea salt caramel ice cream sitting before her. Her mood had improved just enough for her to start eating at her normal pace again.

"I've been in this nightmare a long time, Titus," she said between spoonfuls. "I still can't believe that you were at the Dawn less than a day ago while I've been stuck here seven years.”

“That would make you thirty-”

“Don’t you dare!” she said coldly. “I’m banking on the fact that I’ll be twenty-four again when I wake up.”

“This can’t be good for us," I groaned. "Experiencing years in the nightmare when in reality only a few minutes have passed.”

“I think mother mentioned some kind of whiplash effect, but I’m not sure. I don't even remember what led to all of this happening."

I remembered that she had forgotten who Eleanor was, the reason why we had visited the Rosen Bridge in the first place. I realized I had no clue how much she remembered about that day.

"We were traveling to the world of Nivandor to bring to justice the murderer of one of my close friends," I said.

"Go on."

She looked at me intently, as if trying to remember the events.

"We were ambushed by an Order assassin, Morpheus, I believe.”

"The dude in the Hawaiian shirt?"

"Yes, though he was actually dressed like an assassin in the outside world. He poisoned you with the dream toxin that brought you here."

"I think I'm starting to remember. I nearly killed him in the fight before the stupid toxin started shutting my body down. I don't remember you being there with me."

"You pulled some kind of prank on me with the portal we were going to take, so it took me a few minutes to realize you were actually in trouble."

"Of freaking course."

"When I got back to you, I found you leaning against the bridge. You might have been in the nightmare by then, but you woke up for a brief second to stab me in the shoulder with your wing and inject me with a modified version of the dream toxin, dragging me into this nightmare as well."

"I felt like I had a plan with that. I just can't remember what.”

“According to Marlette, I remember things I shouldn’t,” I said. “Things I should have forgotten entering the nightmare. I think when you modified the toxin for me, you removed that part that would make me forget like everyone."

“I’m sure whatever I did will come in handy later," she said, clearly delighted at the news. ”To think I did all that in a few minutes while fighting off a world-class assassin and being fatally poisoned. If only I knew about the time dilation that would have happened, my time here would have been a lot easier since my servant would have been by my side at the start of it all.”

There it was again, the rare, unironic praise she so rarely gave out. I made sure to remember this moment so I could use it as ammunition the next time she complained about having a useless servant.

"I'm here, right?" I said.

"Seven years too late and horrendously underperforming."

And there was the criticism.

“I’ll give you that one,” I sighed.

“Okay, that fills in most of the gaps in my memory,” she said. “There's still one thing that's bugging me. How did you get us away from the assassin?"

I took in a deep breath. I was hoping to tell her about our predicament much, much later, perhaps once we were safe in the city, but now that I was spot, I felt it would be better to tell her the truth than having to admit I lied to her later.

"Promise me you won't freak out."

"What did you do, Titus, son of Courdine?"

"I dragged us off the Rosen Bridge."

The color drained from Priscilla's face. I was worried she was about to go into a state of shock.

"Tell me why I shouldn't toss you into the void right now," she said in a terse voice.

"Like you said,” I yelped, “the dream toxin pretty much knocked me down almost instantly and there wasn't much I could do. I figured we could survive the fall but the assassin couldn't, so I dragged us off the bridge, made a barrier around us, and crossed my fingers as I entered the nightmare."

She slowly grabbed her hair with both hands and ran her fingers through it like a comb. Then she placed her hands on her face, lowered her head onto the wooden table, and didn't move or say anything for a long time. So long was the pause I almost got up to get another order of ice cream. As I moved to make the order, Priscilla's raised her head from the table like a mother bear being roused from her sleep. I quietly slinked back into my seat.

"I've been falling to my death all this time and I didn't even know about it," she said in a small voice. "I think I'm going to be sick. I think I'm going to kill someone."

She looked directly at me.

"We'll probably be done with the nightmare before we get anywhere close to the bottom of the pit," I reassured her. "Time travels a lot slower here. Remember, seven years passed in three minutes. We'll be falling for at least a minute or two before we really have to start worrying. That's about five years we have in the nightmare, comfortably."

"And if we don't-?"

"The barrier I made should keep us safe,” I said, wondering if the barrier had been fully activated. “And if that doesn't work, your Seraph cells should keep you alive even from a fall that high."

"And you?"

"I'll probably die, but that's alright, you'll make it out alive no problem."

"No, that's not going to work! Have you forgotten about this?"

Priscilla set her spoon on the table and raised her right hand. The Lifelink floated around her right wrist like a loose spider web, connecting her wrist to mine. It was such a thin line that it was hard to believe it was permanent, as far as we knew. There was a chance that the link would be valid only in the nightmare and not in the outside world. This is what I hoped was the case. If so, all we had to was escape the dream and be free from this dire bond.

But a Lifelink was among the most powerful magics known to the magical world. I would not be surprised if the link persisted well beyond the nightmare in the waking world.

Then it hit me.

While making a Lifelink could save a Seraph’s life, it also gave them a weakness they did not have to worry about before, the other half of the link, in this case, me. If I died at any point in this dream from now on, I would die in the waking world. And if I died in the waking world, there was a chance Priscilla would die as well if a Lifelink had made in the waking world as well.

I was speechless for some time, as was Priscilla.

She glanced up at me for a brief moment before she took a deep breath and stared down at the table, utterly defeated.

"We have to find a way out of the nightmare before then," she said weakly. "It's going to be enough of a challenge saving ourselves from the fall once we wake up.

"Absolutely,” I agreed.

Priscilla slowly picked up her spoon and finished the remaining bits of her ice cream. When she finished, she tossed the cup back onto the table and rose from her seat.

"I'm getting more, because why not?" she sighed. "We're in a nightmare, and both of us are going to die miserable deaths."

I rose my seat too, wanting to grab more ice cream as well.

“Before we do that," I asked. "How bad was the damage to our bodies? I know you got shot through the heart, but what happened to me?”

Priscilla glared at me, clearly upset at me for not being able to stop the arrow from piercing her heart.

“Marlette said she could fix the hole in my heart in about half an hour,” she said, grating her words. “Turning your ashes back into a human body, however, is going to take a few hours, at least. I gave her the blueprints to your body to speed things up. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said, laughing nervously. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I heard you say my body was reduced to ashes. That’s not possible, because I’m not a Seraph, that would have killed me.”

“Haven't you been listening? I said Marlette is performing full-body reconstruction on you because your body couldn’t handle keeping me alive even for half a minute,” she said. “The magic I drew for, I don't know, ten seconds, turned your magicless body into a pile of ashes."

I stopped laughing.

"So you're saying you were the one keeping me alive through the Lifelink, not the other way around?"

"Pretty much."

"So I didn't need to make the link in the first place since you would have been fine without it?"

"Mhm."

"So you're saying I've just made it that much harder for us to escape this nightmare for no reason at all?"