I walked down the hallway next to Elina and Heidi, heading for our classroom- Heidi had been switched to our class because Professor Liraca came down with a cold.

  “Our pet Nightmares should be able to breed soon,” Elina said happily.

  “I hope their children have big claws like a crab,” Heidi added.

  “I would rather them have eight tails so they have perfect balance,” I said.

  We caught sight of a cluster of people further down the hall. Three- no four of them were circling around a fifth person who stood statue still, face blank.

  As we got closer we could make out the people. Cystella, Russel, Chetti and Tasman, danced around Brax’s still form, waving fans, candles, sickles, and a pig's head held by Russel.

  The four dancing students all stopped as one to turn to my oncoming group.

  “Help,” the four said in unison. “He’s drowning because he can’t move his face.”

  I blinked looking at Brax who looked back with bland interest. Wrong, wrong, he should be filled with rage, blade in his thigh.

  I felt two hands push me from behind and I stumbled forward, Heidi and Elina’s synchronized voice echoed from behind.

  “He can help! Brax always moves his face for Monty!”

  Anger burned inside me and I felt the bones of my hands snap from my clenched fists. Why would I help Brax out? He harassed me for weeks, and-

  Of course he was my best friend. I’d known him for years on the farm by the mountains where he was my neighbor.

  So despite my current anger at my oldest friend for his harassment I stepped forward.

  “Aye, I’ll ‘elp.”

  Why did I have that accent?

  The four circling students nodded, too wide smiles spreading across their faces.

  We were quickly ushered into the nearby classroom. Which for some reason had pink walls with dancing white rabbits painted on. Said rabbits all froze, staring at me as I entered then to Brax who was carried in and laid down on a metal operating table.

  “Thank you very much!” the six others not including myself and Brax said together, giving me a Solarian- no- Empyrean bow for a high ranking official, before exiting the room.

  I began to hear their whispers, quiet as a man's final breath and filled with sinister promises. Despite that I couldn’t make out any words from behind the door so instead I turned to the prone form of Brax.

  Now instead of our unfashionable green and purple uniform he wore the robes of a Solarian priest. They were a pristine white with underlying beams of black and golden. The outfit did not fit Brax’s young face, short hair and overall bumpkin look.

  I shook out my hands, the previously shattered metacarpals and phalanxes snapping back together.

  I watched my hands clench and unclench-

  So real.

  This is a dream.

  I pushed the thought down. I- I- I… I focused on Brax’s face.

  Unmoving. Emotionless. Wrong. I needed to fix him, as his best friend.

  My fingers traced the musculature and bones of his face, memorizing them as I would a piece of machinery. Then, taking my thumbs I kneaded his eyebrows into an arch, pushed his under eyelids up and sliced grooves into the corner of his eyes with my nails. Finally I hooked my fingers into the corner of his lips and tugged them upwards.

  Once that was done I took a step back to admire my work.

  …

  Terrible. His face was in a wooden carving of happiness, very different from the- the kind and expressive boy I was used to.

  Taking a deep breath I slapped Brax’s face as hard as I could, wiping away his altered expression and returning to the placid mask of before.

  This time I pushed the insides of his eyebrows up and pulled his lips down, but he didn’t look truly sad, more like he was exercising facial muscles. So I punched him in the face to make him cry, but all it did was leave a knuckle shaped indentation on his face.

  I had to slap him again to wipe the mistakes away.

  Good.

  I froze for a moment before shaking the odd thought away. I was trying to save my cousin's life after all.

  Several more attempts were made, though what expressions I attempted to put on Brax’s face seemed to elude me until finally I threw my hands up in the air dramatically.

  “Fine, I’ll ‘ave to do somethin ‘ere,” I said in a garishly thick accent.

  The whispers from the other side of the door stopped for a moment before continuing, this time louder and decipherable.

  “Do it, do it, do it, do it,” they chanted.

  I pulled the steak knife out of Brax’s thigh and leveled it at the boy's face.

  “Do it, do it, do it, do it.”

  Placing the tip of the blade in the center of Brax’s hairline I dipped it in, the flesh parting bloodlessly. When Brax made no sign of noticing the cut I pulled down slowly, slicing Brax from forehead to chin before placing the knife down.

  Then I grabbed the two sides by the cut and opened Brax’s face like a book. The connective tissue fought against me, popping and ripping sounds overtaking the chanting behind the door.

  Instead of the scent of blood or any other bodily type, a floral fragrance wafted out, as though several flowers bloomed around me at the same time.

  Brax’s muscles on the other hand undulated like struggling worms when exposed to the air. Of course that was the issue, the muscles needed to breathe.

  I let them slowly calm down until they were contracting and relaxing at a sedate pace. Good, now to rearrange them.

  I moved the muscles with my fingers, their ribbed grains briefly spasming with each touch.

  This was going to be my masterpiece. I was going to create an expression so lifelike it would even fool Mr. and Mrs. Brickwell. Contract the risorius muscle, sharpen the cheekbone, make the procerus protruce. Once I felt the muscles were properly in place I pulled Brax’s split skin back over his skull.

  A monster looked back at me.

  Brax’s face was twisted, gnarled like a tree, sharp edges of skin impossible in humans and a look of such loathing on his face that it sent a spike of fear through my soul.

  He was going to kill me, skin me like I did him and hang me from a tree.

  The long cut down the center of Brax’s face split on its own, a large eye blinking open its copper colored iris intersected with a spiraling black pupil.

  I balled my hand into a fish and slammed it down onto his head. It exploded in flesh colored clay chunks, cool brain matter slapping wetly onto my face…

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Okay, time to put him back together and try again.

  —

  “So you think of something, then it appears?” Elina asked. “Like just, boom, apple pie?”

  “No, it's not that quick,” I replied. “Remember the detail spiral exercise?”

  We were walking across the academy grounds, which mainly consisted of stone pathways, oft trimmed bushes, and small beds of flowers next to benches. Enough decoration to add life and community, but not so much as to be a burden on the caretakers.

  “Yeah, imagine an object, what it is made of, its color, its patterns, so on.”

  “It's much the same. If I imagined a door one would not just pop into existence. It would be blurry and distorted. So then I would imagine what it was made out of, how many hinges and panels it had. What the knob and lock looked like. As I do that it becomes less blurry and more substantial. I could stop there and it would be pretty realistic, but I have found I can take it even further. I can create the actual locking mechanism, the roughness of the wood, and its grain, the glue and nails that hold the planks together. You can even add smells, tastes and temperature.”

  “You’ve been tasting doors?” Elina asked with a slightly disgusted look.

  “Yes?”

  “How? You don’t have a body.”

  “I don’t have a body, but I have all the senses that come with one. I can change the perspective of where I’m looking, I can pick up and move objects and delve into water to taste its freshness.”

  “Okay… but it doesn’t make you full?”

  “Of course not,” I replied blandly.

  “Don’t give me that, it's magic.”

  “Dreaming.”

  “Oh shut it. But based on what you said it seems rather easy.”

  “It’s not exactly difficult,” I replied, holding the door to the class building open for her. “But if you get distracted it can throw off what your Crafting. If I think about how thirsty I am while creating a fork it might become watery or transparent. Or I can lose focus on how big something is supposed to be and suddenly the fork has giant foot long prongs.”

  We passed a few other first years that gave me a wide berth. Elina threw them a nasty face in response, but I just continued walking.

  “That sounds tedious,” she said, looking behind her at the retreating students.

  “I will miss you,” I replied seriously, slowing as we reached the .

  “What?!”

  “Well you obviously don’t care enough about being a Dreamer to put in a simple amount of effort.”

  “You, Mister Gao, are an asshole,” she said primly, opening the door to the classroom and striding away with a flick of her hair.

  Right. As I walked to my own seat I stared at Professor Pure sifting through papers at the podium.

  A few weeks had passed since I opened my Dreamscape, and my brief stint as being the infamous Empyrean who opened their Dreamscape first passed as others joined me. Only a few for now, but a field trip would bolster those numbers soon according to the professors.

  None of them mentioned the incident or my continuation as a student hanging on by a thread, but their eyes followed me, the weight like a sword on my neck.

  “Today will be another sculpting day. This time I will be giving you each a card with a certain theme, and you will do your best to create something in line with that that theme means to you,” Professor Pure said, standing and handing each person a box with simple tools, a brick of clay and a card.

  He skipped my seat, though that was the norm now. He also skipped Audrey Plune and Cystella, the only other two with opened Dreamscapes.

  The professor finished handing out the clay then moved to the back of the class.

  “Come on, let's go.”

  The three of us stood, eyes of envy staring at our backs as we followed Professor Pure out of the class and to the room next door. We sat in the only three chairs available and waited for the Professor. At least Plune and I waited, Cystella already had her eyes closed, and she was either able to fall asleep at a moment's notice or was Crafting in her Dreamscape. I truly did not know.

  “I suppose you two have had enough of Crafting?” Professor Pure said, leaning against the wall.

  “Yes!” Audrey Plune exclaimed.

  I let her exclamation speak for me.

  In the past few weeks we could only do two things with our new world warping powers. Craft items in our Dreamscapes, and Draft Intent.

  Drafting was pretty simple. I pulled Intent from my Dreamscape into reality, which took the form of a white steam like haze. The color was dependent on the individual's Dreamscape, which according to Professor Pure, was dependent on the individual's Dream. While Drafting my body became… enhanced. Stronger was not an accurate enough descriptor. It was too soon to know the exact effects.

  Crafting was what we spent most of our time doing. Though similarly to Drafting, there was only so much we could do for now. Intent was not in endless supply, it was produced by the items Crafted in our Dreamscape, which were in turn created by Intent, making it a self propagating system. However, items also dissolved in Dreamscapes at varying degrees. The paper that I first Crafted was already gone, but dozens of little items sat on the floor that did not exist within my Dreamscape. Some were still vivid while others were blurred and fuzzy, as if seeing it through low quality glass.

  Books with thick blocky pages sat next on a chair made out of bones. At its feet were several precious metals and stones that could have gotten me a house in the Ruby District. Pieces of wood, a blurry painting, and even a femur were scattered around.

  If I tried to Craft too much I would start to feel… not exhaustion, at least not as I was familiar with the word. Exhaustion usually constituted one of two things, mental or physical. This was a third thing, intrinsically linked to the other two.

  It was as if my Dreamscape was gasping for breath because it went on a long run and its legs were burning.

  Intent also gave certain feelings or impressions. So far I had only felt my own and Professor Pure’s at my request.

  Professor Pure’s was wild, not like some uncontrollable monster, but instead a freeing feeling, as though he lived in an unrestrained, simple world.

  Mine felt like a bath, but cold and almost sharp, like mint. As far as feelings went it was not the most exciting, but it did bring a refreshing sensation whenever I focused on it.

  Then there were the passive benefits to having become a Dreamer. Intent's very presence nourished my body. I was tougher, stronger, with a more robust immune system and even had a longer lifespan. These enhancements were negligible for now, but they would add up over time.

  “Good,” Professor Pure continued. “I have grown tired of it as well. So we will be moving onto the next stage of your training. Namely, the creation of impossible items within your Dreamscape and the manipulation of Intent. Thanks to the visualization training you all have already gone through, imagining unrealistic items should not be a difficult task. In fact I am sure many of you have already inadvertently created something that you would not find in our less interesting reality. As Dreamers our greatest power comes from our imagination, and your Wits potency can be vastly increased by Crafting these reality breaking items. Think of the laws of nature, then break them, think of mundane artifacts, and exaggerate them. Be it a painting with no canvas, a ball that will never stop rolling or a fire made of water.”

  Professor Pure then picked up a piece of paper and brandished it like a limp sword.

  “Then there is manipulating the Intent you Draft from your Dreamscape, also referred to as Intent Fashioning.”

  I raised my hand and the professor nodded at me.

  “How is that different from a Wit?”

  Sky blue Intent flowed off of Professor Pure’s paper wielding hand, rising around the paper but not disturbing it.

  “Wits are tools and Fashioning is skill. A boy with a sword can kill a man, but a trained soldier with a sword can kill a dozen. And a Dreamer with nothing but their Intent? Far far more. You see, Intent is aptly named. It is anything we wish it to be, in the broadest of terms. Intent Fashioning does not have the streamlined power that a Wit can achieve, but it has the usefulness of being as available as it is abundant. Wish to make something float? Push it up with Intent.”

  As he said so, the paper was suddenly lifted up, hovering the same way it would if I was lying under it and blowing air up.

  “Wish for it to fly? Control it.”

  This time the Intent enveloped the entirety of the page. Which no longer flapped around in the air and instead flew around the room gently. I noticed that the Intent was no longer connected to the Professor’s body. I would need to test that for myself.

  “Wish to turn it into something? Mold it.”

  As quickly as one would close their fist the paper folded into itself a dozen times, emerging as a delicate crane that continued to fly around the room, its translucent wings flapping merrily.

  I raised my hand and the Professor let the crane land on the top of my head.

  “Yes Mister Gao?”

  “What is the point of having Wits if they are not as flexible as Fashioning then?”

  “Because there are things Fashioning cannot do, and Wits will always have an oomph to them that Fashioning struggles to. Take this fire for example.”

  Just as he had on the first day of class the Professor raised a finger and a candle flame of pink fire lit up the tip of his digit.

  “I can raise the temperature of my Intent, I can make it into the shape and color of the fire, but this fire, as you may be able to infer by the off color, has unique properties. Mister Gao, hold out your hand.”

  “Sir?”

  “Do it Gao.”

  I did so, expecting to see him flick the small fireball at me. Instead the paper crane on my head shot forward. It sliced a thin line across the back of my hand and knuckles. The paper thin cut beaded with blood almost immediately and I held back a hiss at the unexpected pain.

  Then the professor flicked the fire at my hand. It splashed directly onto the cut, but there was no pain. Instead it created a warm tingling sensation like the pins and needles one gets after sitting on their legs.

  Just as suddenly as the cut appeared it faded away, even the blood burned up like dry paper leaving my hand spotless.

  I placed my finger on the now healed cut, feeling nothing except a lingering warmth.

  “That is the difference between Fashioning and a Wit, and if you apply your skill at Fashioning to your Wit then you can get this.”

  Professor Pure spread out his hands and this time pink fire enveloped the entirety of his limbs. Pure flared the power and the fire roared even greater, Cystella kept her eyes closed, but Audrey Plune stood and backed away. I did not, too enraptured by the professor’s display.

  The pink fire began to flow into a singular ball between his hands, condensing with might until the core was white with only the fringes tinged pink.

  “Even if both of you had my Wit, you would be unable to replicate this, barring Miss Cysella of course. This is what happens when skill meets power. I hope none of you become the fool with the loaded weapon and no idea how to use it.”