“What was that?”, Morgan breathed.

“Awakening,” I said.

“Connecting to one of the fundamental forces of the universe and feeling its entirety for a split second,” Luke added unnecessarily.

“It was amazing! I had no idea! And a little bit scary, but mostly amazing! Nobody told me about that part.” I noticed that at some point during all the action, Morgan’s hand had made it all the way over to the sleeping puppy, and she now had two fingertips resting against fur.

“Didn’t I?” Luke scratched his head, clearly deep in thought. “I’m sure that I did. No, wait, I thought about doing it, but it didn’t come up while we were talking. That’s, uh, that’s when I came up with that ‘connecting to one of the fundamental forces of the universe’ line.”

“It was a good line,” Morgan said, and she really seemed to believe it.

While we’d been chatting, the show was still playing in the background. Young Luke had been gaping at the generic fantasy world he’d landed in, as though he was somehow surprised by it. Of course that was what it looked like to him, the giant nerd. But he was done geeking out and now started boldly striding towards the village, arms swinging every which way. Hours passed in a matter of seconds as time stretched in a way very similar to a dream - which made sense, since that was basically what was happening. Physically he was still back in his bedroom, it was only his mind that was connecting to any forces.

Tired and thirsty, the back of his neck burning after a long trek under the midday sun, he reached the village. It was bustling, and quite possibly hustling as well, with villagers bringing in the harvest, big crates and barrels full of grains strapped to their backs. They didn’t pay any attention to Young Luke, but in a way that didn’t seem rude; they were working too frantically to stop and chat with strangers.

“They’re all animals,” Morgan said, as Young Luke ducked to avoid a load-bearing hippo and almost got tripped up in the process by a fox carrying carrots in its mouth.

“Sure are,” I said. “If you ever see a human during your awakening, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.”

“Why?”

Exactly the response I was fishing for. “Because that’s not a human.”

“They’re spirits, not really animals,” Luke explained. “Everything here is a spirit of some kind. Most of them take animal forms, because they act and think like those animals. Or maybe having an animal form makes them act and think like that animal, there’s been a lot of scholarly debate over that.”

Young Luke found a big, flightless bird - an emu or an ostrich, I couldn’t remember which was which - standing still in the middle of the chaos, who seemed to be in charge. None of the humans spoke in any human language, but they were clearly talking to each other in various animal noises, and Mayor Bird was making a weird thudding humming sound at the other villagers to direct the flow of traffic, while being given a respectful berth even amid the interspecies kerfuffle. The overall effect was a lot like a principal standing out on the schoolground during lunch. Young Luke was trying to ask it what was going on, but either it didn’t understand human or it was too busy. He’d almost given up when it became obvious what was happening here.

It wasn’t just hot because of the sun. The animal noises flared up for a second and then went dead silent as a vulture started circling overhead. It was three times the size a vulture should have been, its neck metres long but coiled up in a bundle, and it was orbited by a dozen roughly hewn red rocks. The heat intensified, and the air itself grew dead and still, all the moisture sucked out of it. Young Luke’s thirst grew by an order of magnitude in an instant, leaving him desperate for a single drop of water.

“The second type of spirit,” I said. “Monster. Figure you’ve got a solid understanding of those already.”

Morgan’s head vibrated up and down in what was probably meant to be a nod. “They’re like normal spirits, but they’re twisted inside, so their bodies are twisted on the outside too. Sometimes they don’t even look like animals any more.”

“Or maybe it’s the other way around,” Luke said.

The villagers all began raising the food they were carrying to the sky, offering it up to the vulture, and shaking with fear while they did so. But not all of them had managed to get their teeth, paws or other appendages on an offering. Those who hadn’t managed to scrounge something together turned on their neighbours, fights breaking out here and there as they tried to steal one another’s offerings. In a couple spots, I saw spirits skip the middleman and try to straight up murder their friends instead, so they could make an offering of meat. There was something almost human in their heartless desperation.

“And the last type is fey. Spirits that look, think and act like people. If you know anything about people, that thought should scare the absolute shit out of you. Hence: run away as fast as you can.”

All Young Luke had to do was pick one of the spirits and bond with it, and he’d be whisked back to the real world, along with his brand new familiar and cool magical powers. Or he could grab some object he found lying around and bond with that instead. No fun companion to invade his dreams and bite his nose, but the end result was the same. But he wouldn’t have been Luke if he’d taken the easy way out.

He threw a rock at it, of all things. It didn’t even come close to the vulture, but it sure got the thing’s attention. Then he froze up, clearly just now realising how monumentally stupid this idea had been. Lucky for him, the vulture was just as surprised as he was, so he had enough time to unfreeze and run. Just barely enough time.

He’d managed to reach the door of one of the houses when it dried up and shrivelled away, collapsing into a pile of desiccated twigs and sand. Everything inside the house remained unaffected though, so Young Luke decided to take advantage of that by weaving his way past buildings, heartlessly using them as cover rather than risk his own skin. Many good thatched cottages died that day.

But there was one building that looked much more sturdy than the rest, built from stone and glass, and constructed about as solidly as the puddings my dad used to make before his lifetime ban from the kitchen. After doubling back behind a hut so the vulture lost track of him, Young Luke managed to slip through the crowd and make it inside that building. Once inside, he saw it was a temple of some sort, pews all facing an altar at the other end of the building, and on top of that altar rested a sword. Young Luke approached that sword and reached out for it, hands trembling. I knew how this part of the story went.

“I didn’t have any idea what kind of bond I wanted,” Luke explained to Morgan. “I didn’t even know if I was looking for a familiar or an implement. But the moment I walked into that building, I knew. People say that you choose what to bond with when you awaken, but I dunno if that’s totally true.”

“Clearly you had some amount of choice,” I said.

“Well, yeah, but you know what I mean, right? I had some say over how it happened, but I’m not sure I was really in the driver’s seat.”

“What do you mean?”, Morgan asked, as Young Luke walked up and held his hand just above the sword. It had an ornate jewelled hilt, but the blade itself wasn’t visible, still sheathed in a sea-blue scabbard with lots of little silver swirly bits decorating it.

“I knew that this had to be my implement. But then I hesitated at the last moment. Um, you might be surprised by this, but I’m not always totally one hundred percent decisive about everything.”

“Why? I mean, why’d you hesitate, I knew the other part.”

“I thought about what it meant. Swords are the definitive noble weapon, they’re used by knights and heroes and that’s exactly what I wanted to be. But they’re still weapons. If a sword was going to be a part of me for the rest of my life, what did that say about me as a person, who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do? And what kind of magic would I end up with? Even if you’re using it to protect others, a sword is made to cut and kill. It’s like you were saying earlier, I didn’t want to have magic that could only be used to hurt people.”

“Wow. I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Young Luke heard the vulture squawking furiously, and close by. It had figured out where it was, and he didn’t have much time left to fret. In that moment, he made the fateful decision. He took up the sword, pulled it from its sheath, and stared his reflection in the eye in the polished steel of its blade. I didn’t normally nerd out about these things, but it was a beautiful weapon. The hilt might have been decorative, but the stabbing part of the sword was all business, sleek and elegant. Then he reverently laid the sword back down on the altar, and strapped the empty scabbard to his waist.

He’d made his choice, and the image of this world began to fade around him as he returned to his body. But he clenched his fists, stomped a foot down on the tiled floor, and refused to go. The fantasy world stabilised again as he marched back out the door, raised a hand to the vulture that had landed on a nearby rooftop so it could get up close and personal with him, and summoned his light for the first time. He may not have had that cutting and killing power, but there was still force behind that light, I knew that from experience. He gathered it in his outstretched hand, then blasted it out at the vulture, knocking it off its perch with so much force that it flew out of the village entirely. Only then, after the villagers turned to stare at him with gratitude and awe, did he let himself come back to his body.

“You’re a pretty cool dude,” I told him, as I let the memory disappear. His blush and stammered thanks undercut my point a little, but I still stood by the sentiment.

I was woken up next morning by the smell of frying sausages. I could feel the moon was well and truly gone, so before I’d even opened my eyes I ripped that stupid bracelet off. I felt my strength come racing back, the queasy feeling in my stomach lifted, and most importantly, I could really smell frying sausages now. I opened my eyes and tossed the blanket off me, and saw a few lilies get flung into the air along with it. Whoops. I could bring stuff out of the dream and into the real world, but I hadn’t actually meant to do it this time. But they’d dissolve soon enough, so it didn’t matter.

More important things to think about. I stood up and bounded through the house, following my nose to figure out where breakfast was. Morgan’s house was huge, so without guidance I could’ve been lost for weeks in an endless labyrinth of sitting rooms and studies, until finally a search party stumbled upon my emaciated corpse. Even with my nose’s help, there were still a few close calls.

Morgan’s dad had already gone in to work, so it was just the three of us for breakfast, and I figured there wouldn’t be much to talk about that we hadn’t already gone over. The dream had gone on for a while after the big show, and Morgan had even managed to scratch the puppy behind the ears without freaking out at all, but we ran out of conversation eventually and agreed to leave things there. So I was surprised to see Luke looking animated, and calling out for me the moment I entered the dining room.

“What’s up? Is it more important than sausages? I hope you’re making enough for three.”

“They’re not ready yet!”, Morgan called out from the kitchen.

“It’s more important than sausages.” Luke had been holding his tablet as he sat at the table; he put it down and spun it around so I could take a look at it. He’d pulled up an article on some news website, the headline was ‘Mayor Robert White Found Murdered’.

“Huh. Sucks to be him, but why’s it matter to us?” I knew the name, but he was mayor of Fall’s Bay, a bigger city about an hour away from Summerview.

“You know my family’s from Fall’s Bay?”

I nodded. Grace and I were the only members of the gang who didn’t come from somewhere else originally.

“They’ve heard some stuff. It hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, but there’s a lot of chatter that this wasn’t just an everyday murder. People are saying that there were arcane-looking runes drawn on the walls, and other, grosser things.”

“Huuuuuuuh. Still, that doesn’t mean we have to get involved. Fall’s Bay has its own folks looking after it. Plus, who knows what those runes actually mean? it might be a totally normal psycho serial killer.”

“I know, but I can’t just sit here and not do anything about it! Most of the community there is very traditional, so they wouldn’t do anything about a killer unless one of their own people was being targeted. And even if it is a regular mundane serial killer, that’s still bad! Murder is pretty universally recognised as not being a good thing!”

“So what, your plan is to pop down to investigate a murder that’s already being investigated by actual professionals with guns, step on a bunch of traditionalists’ toes, and end up hunting down what could be a totally mundane serial killer, an unknown monster, or if we’re really lucky, an awakened serial killer?”

“Alex. My cousin lives there. He’s eight years old.” There was an intensity to Luke’s eyes that I’d very rarely seen before. Damn it. If I didn’t help out, he’d go charging off by himself. What was worse was that, dumb as this idea was, I couldn’t entirely blame him for doing it. I sighed extra long and loud, to make sure he got the message.

“Okay. I’ll drive. But if we’re doing this, we’re doing it properly. I know Grace is busy today, and she’d be the voice of reason telling us to not do this if she knew about it, but we need some kind of backup. Unless the cops are all asleep, the only way either of us is getting anywhere near White’s house is by force.”

I was pretty sure I could see him nodding out of the corner of my eye, but I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was busy typing up a message on my phone. I got my reply almost instantly.

CASSSSSSSS (22/05/52 9:52) Luke and I are gonna go break into a major crime scene

CASSSSSSSS (22/05/52 9:52) You coming?

CDXX Adolebitque Eam (22/05/52 9:52) Like a priest at a primary school.

I snorted, then looked back up at Luke. “Charity’s in. Guessing you want to leave ASAP?”

“If not sooner.”

And yet he hadn’t woken me up. He was a weird one alright. But he was a friend, and those were hard to come by.

As I was coordinating things between Luke and Charity, Morgan walked in with a thin smile and two plates stacked with sausages, eggs and toast. She laid them down in front of us and scurried off without a word.

“Hey,” I called out to her before she could get too far. “Thanks.”

“Oh. You’re welcome. Good luck out there.”

“Luck? Me? Nah. Never had it, don’t need it.”

I tore into the sausage. It was just as delicious as it smelled.