“The setting of your alignments was truly the final step,” said the King. “As such, you are now ready to venture forth into your first Dream. Before that, there are a few matters about Dreams and rescuing Dreamers I must inform you of.”

  “Thank you,” said Lucy. “I did have lots of questions, but it sounds like you’re going to answer them.”

  She gave a smile and nodded, prompting the King to nod as well. In truth, Lucy was so lost on the whole idea of exploring Dreams and “rescuing Dreamers” that she wouldn’t even know where to begin asking. While those few instances where the King had read her mind had felt eerie, in this case she was hoping he’d listen to her jumbled thoughts and tell her what she needed to know, even if she herself couldn’t articulate it.

  “When you enter a Dream,” the King began, “you will emerge in close proximity to the Dreamer. Every Dreamer you encounter will be facing a predicament, and it is your mission as a Dream Knight to get them out of said predicament.”

  “What do you mean, by ‘predicament,’ exactly? An enemy or something harmful that they need to avoid?”

  “Many of these predicaments do manifest in physical ways, which must be literally escaped from or vanquished. However, these predicaments all originate from the realm of human temperament, and as such their manifestations can vary drastically. You would agree that not everything that may ail a person is necessarily a physical danger, yes?” He paused, allowing Lucy to nod, then waited a beat before speaking again. “My apologies. I wish that I may provide you a definitive description, but this is one aspect of a Dream Knight’s journey where you must expect to be continually surprised.”

  “I understand,” said Lucy, wondering if her own ailments—whatever they may be—would manifest in a straightforward manner, or as some strange, abstract, psychological rendering.

  “Given the variability of Dreamers’ predicaments,” said the King, “there is a chance that you will be unable to rescue a particular Dreamer with your current alignments and Feats. Because of this, you will always have the option to return here, to your Final Dream, so that you may venture to other Dreams, become more powerful, and then return to the Dream containing an impasse. To return to your Final Dream, you need only return to the location in the current Dream from where you emerged, and then will yourself to return.”

  “I can…leave a Dream?” said Lucy. “But if the Dreamer is in danger, won’t it be too late by the time I come back?”

  “Fortunately, the issue you describe will never happen. Each Dream has its own flow of time, encapsulated and isolated from all other Dreams. If you leave a Dream and then return, you will return at the exact point of time from which you departed.”

  “Oh…I see.” Lucy found that detail very strange, given how time worked in reality, but she supposed it was similar to pausing a a game or app, then resuming it once you returned. Either way, it was reassuring to know that she could she could come back to a Dream after taking the time to re-prepare herself.

  However, this reassurance only took into account the “happy path” when encountering an insurmountable obstacle: that Lucy would be able to flee, then run back to her point of emergence, as the King had said, in order to return to her Final Dream. Lucy’s hands shook on her Ideal’s handle as she asked: “What if…what if I die, in a Dream? Can Dream Knights die?”

  The King bowed his head, and in that moment of silence Lucy’s heart quickened, and she was suddenly aware of how easy it would be to simply fall off the edge of her platform and drop through the hundreds of miles of sky to arrive at the answer to her question first-hand…

  But the King’s voice pierced her brewing fantasies: “Dream Knights do not perish in the normal sense. In the same way myths and legends persist eternally in the collective unconscious, so too will a Dream Knight continue to exist in the Lattice of Dreams for as long as humanity dreams. If you do meet an untimely demise within a particular Dream, you will find yourself returned here in your Final Dream. However, as I have said, every Dream has its own flow of time. Should you meet your end in one Dream, there is no way to ’reverse course’ and undo it. To the Dreamer, and the reality they are subconsciously creating, you will have died in their Dream. Because of that, you will not be able to return to that Dream.”

  Lucy nodded with a mixed expression, relieved that she wouldn’t actually die in the face of the untold dangers before her, but worried about the consequence the King had just described. “So if I die, I’ll be locked out of that Dream. Would it…also impact my influence, my alignments?”

  The King clasped his hands before him, his robed sleeves hanging down listlessly. “That is correct. Should you fall in a Dream, you will forfeit the alignment changes and Feats you acquired from the previous Dream. Should you fall multiple times in succession, then the changes from your latest successes will be undone, in reverse order. Such is the nature of diminishing influence in the eyes of the collective unconscious.”

  Lucy nodded without speaking. So each “death” acted like an undo button. She gulped, thinking about how it was possible, with a particularly bad streak, to end up all the way back at square one. The only way for her to mentally combat this for now was to assure herself that that would be a very slim possibility, and that there was no way she could be that careless.

  “But,” she said, raising her chin slightly skyward, “when I do succeed in rescuing a Dreamer, I get more alignment points to use, and I can choose a Feat to get?”

  “That is so. When you complete a rescue successfully and return here to your Final Dream, you will be given ten additional alignment points to use on the Three Axes as you see fit. You will also go through the Feat acquisition process. But I shall spare you details until you have reached that point.”

  The King paused, and though his face was still as nonexistent as it had been since they met, Lucy sensed that he meant to give a soft, encouraging smile. “After all,” said the King, “the dawn of your journey can wait no longer.”

  He looked off to the side, where, at the very edge of the floor-less and wall-less audience chamber, millions of what looked like tiny sparks gathered into one spot. These were not the clouds that she and the King had molded, but strange, dust-like particles that resembled the King’s robes in how their hues shifted through the entire spectrum of colour. At their convergence formed a thin rectangular shape with a ball-like protrusion at one edge.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  A door.

  Lucy stared at it a moment, then looked to the King, who gave only a silent nod. That was a sign that she should do exactly what she had in mind, and so she allowed the curiosity fluttering through her legs to take her toward the mysterious door. Cloud platforms formed at each of her footsteps, reminding Lucy that this world was, still, her domain.

  That thought only served to heighten the otherworldliness of the door as she stood before it. It looked like an ordinary wooden door, so familiar and nondescript that it had the vanishing effect of a door one has passed through a million times at home without needing to consciously take in any of its details. But there was a different slant to the way the light fell on it, all even smooth across the entire surface, as if it were lit by a source that ignored the sun overhead. Toward the top of this door was the number “1” marked in bold black paint, and beneath it was a symbol of a palm stretched open. It was easy to guess what the former meant, but Lucy wondered if the latter was meant to be an instruction on how to handle the door, or another thing entirely that held a deeper meaning.

  Lucy continued to regard the door silently, holding her Ideal at her side. Even without a word from the King it was clear where this door led.

  A Dream.

  To whom this Dream belonged, she didn’t know. She would have to consciously open the door herself and step inside in order to find out, and already she felt trepidation at the sheer amount of unknown waiting on the other side of the actions she was meant to take. She looked down at herself, taking in her full body armour and the brilliant glowing sword in her hand, and quickly decided that she had to trust she was fully prepared for whatever she was about to step into. For once in her life, she had reason to believe in herself this strongly, and she forced herself not to let go of that.

  In the same way, she forced her hand to rise and grasp the doorknob. It turned unceremoniously, yielding to a twist of her wrist as easily as if it were the doorknob to her bedroom. Pushing the door came just as easily with a quiet creak, giving way to darkness.

  Lucy’s eyes weren’t playing tricks on her: beyond the door frame was perfect pitch black, stretching endlessly onward. Her feet moved on their own, perhaps out of a subconscious acknowledgement that if she were to stop now, she wouldn’t be able to move at all. Once she was through, the door swung shut behind her, encasing her in true, total darkness.

  It was mesmerizing in its vastness at first, feeling like the darkness one might expect to see while floating through space without any stars in sight. Then the terror set in, sharp—but surprisingly brief. For Lucy found that despite the absoluteness of this darkness, it was not hostile nor threatening, concealing hidden dangers in plain sight. Rather, it was a gentle absence of all such things, relinquishing that overwhelming sense of vision so that the other four senses would soon follow, just like in the soothing descent toward sleep.

  Lucy’s eyelids grew heavy, and soon they fell of their own accord. It was as though her body was becoming one with the darkness: the darkness that wrapped itself all around her warmly like a blanket. It wasn’t just her vision that it enveloped, but her hearing as well, for the ensuing silence was so deep that Lucy could no longer hear her own breathing. Then, after what felt like both an eternity and the blink of an eye, the silence was cut:

  “Once you are ready, you may open your eyes and observe the Dream you are now a part of. Take care, Lucy.”

  The King’s voice swam all around her as it always had, except this time it trailed off behind her, falling back further and further like a leaf blown backwards by the wind. Once it was gone completely, folding into the back of her mind as neatly as the last memory of a dream in the morning, Lucy opened her eyes.

  And was immediately hit with a change in sensation beyond just her vision.

  The dry coolness of the sky breeze had been gently lapping at her skin—and now it was replaced with a violent howling wind that tossed her hair and cape about and chilled her face and neck with frigid moisture.

  That moisture—that intense dampness—hit her like a brick wall.

  Only after that onslaught did her eyes register the shifting forms of deep blue all around her, their murky colours clashing with the vibrant vermilion of sunset that highlighted their crests. Water. Endless water, stretching out to the horizon in much the same way as the sky had done in her own Dream. But while the sky had posed no apprehension to Lucy, who for all her timidity had never been afraid of heights, she was now made acutely aware of her long-recessed fear of drowning.

  Stumbling back from the waves, each of her footsteps produced a loud, yawning creak. Looking down, Lucy was surprised to see wooden boards arranged in a row and held together…somehow, in some way she didn’t know, but she was glad for it keeping her afloat rather than the alternative.

  Looking about, Lucy quickly found that she was on a boat of some kind with two pairs f oars on the sides. Could it be a big, multi-rower kayak? This was her only guess because her mother had been quite the kayaking fanatic in her spare time, and besides that Lucy herself had no other knowledge of rowing boats. This acknowledgement was more upsetting than usual, as she was keenly aware of how her lack of knowledge about her surroundings would make her task as a Dream Knight more difficult.

  Am I really cut out for this?

  It was one thing to don the armour and wield the sword, but it was another to have the worldly knowledge needed to deal with all the different environments she was to face. And already, in the first Dream outside of her own, she was a fish out of water. While she had been content in the waking world of having a quiet and familiar life, here in this raging sea that was literally worlds away from everything she knew, Lucy cursed herself for being such a shut-in.

  Sinking her body down until she was sitting on the boat’s surface, Lucy let all of her energy leave her, feeling her armour on her body and the sword on her hand as things external to her, as things that impinged their weight on her, the weak young girl inside. She was about to bring her knees up and bury her face into it when she caught sight of her reflection already having done so.

  But wait—the reflection wasn’t in the water, but on the boat’s wooden boards.

  That was no reflection at all, Lucy realized. There on the other side of the boat was another person, arms cradling their knees while their face was completely sunken into them.

  “They chasing you, too?”

  Their voice was muffled and choked, but one could make out that it belonged to a man well into middle age, reminding Lucy of how her father had sounded. Though it was difficult to make out his figure—not least because of the harsh, salty winds lashing at her eyes until they teared up—his build did appear to line up with that.

  Immediately, Lucy was caught by an inner compulsion to close the distance between the two of them, rather than leaving him to mope there on his own. In the waking world, she would have been far more likely to walk by silently, but here that was not an option. And not just in a literal sense, as Lucy took stock of her armour and sword once more.

  As she drew near him, feeling the rocking of the tides that swirled beneath the boat, the man looked up and revealed his face for the first time. His eyes were grief-stricken and yet perfectly stable, sorely accepting, amidst the torrent of wind and water that surrounded him. Looking up at Lucy, he said: “Don’t bother jumping. They’ll put you right back.”

  “What?” Lucy was left aghast. He was perfectly calm while saying that, but Lucy felt a chill down her spine at the implication. “What will put me back?”

  “Agh, I don’t know!” The man was yelling now, clutching the sides of his head. “You think I’d know its name? If it even has a name? I just know that’s what it does to me, night after night after night…”

  “Night after night…” Lucy repeated to herself. She’d had a hunch since laying eyes on him, but now she was almost sure of it.

  This hapless man, trapped both physically and mentally, was the first Dreamer she had to rescue.

  Knights Into Dreams so far, you might also enjoy this story from M.A. Potsy called Jellyfish Dreams! Featuring a great female protagonist who is transported to stranger and stranger realms each night, come explore these fascinating dreams that are on the “casually eating strawberries that taste like tires” level of the surreal scale.