Return, return, return, return, return, return, return, return

  Lucy mentally shouted that single word to herself over and over, walking along her path step by step, even as the hissing behind her grew almost loud enough to drown out her mental voice.

  Then there came the sound of grinding.

  Was it the gnashing of teeth? The sharpening of a weapon? Lucy’s mind flung about in a thousand different directions, all leading to the same destination:

  She was going to die.

  But, feeling the weight of her Ideal in her hand, its blade pointing in a single clear direction, Lucy shook her head. She had to focus.

  Return, return, return—

  Her legs halted, her body sunk, and all her senses abruptly cut away. Was this what it was like to die in a single strike? An overwhelming sinking feeling, followed by the swift, unforgiving cessation of all sensory functions that constituted living—that sounded about right.

  Her vision came back suddenly, struck by a light so blinding Lucy had no choice but to shut her eyes. If this was indeed the “light” people talked about seeing in the great beyond, then Lucy was surprised she wasn’t more panicked. She was calm, far too calm, to the point where she could lay back as if napping on a hammock in the most wonderful of paradises.

  But it was hard to lay back while falling.

  Lucy snapped her eyes open and, after enduring the pain of her eyes adjusting from pure darkness, saw the clear azure of the sky. Her gaze snapped downward, where a familiar white castle was fast approaching into view.

  She had returned.

  By a stroke of sheer luck, she had found her starting point and escaped just before her assailant had finished the deed.

  Lucy was relieved, but she had no time to dwell on it as she recalled the pain and aches of her last less-than-graceful landing.

  Looking down at where she was to land in the King’s audience chamber, Lucy focused on materializing cloud nets to catch her, just as she had done before. But this time, she hoped that either the nets would be stronger, or that they would materialize faster and with greater frequency to break her fall.

  The first of the nets formed from cloud matter as she had wanted, but the time it took was longer than she would have wanted. Her falling speed was still too fast for the net to handle, so after a split second of resistance, it broke and Lucy fell through to continue her shooting star-like descent.

  Gritting her teeth, Lucy mentally commanded more nets to appear underneath her. They all took just as long as the first to appear, each one slowing her fall speed just a tad before breaking apart. If it weren’t for the fact that Lucy was dealing with the hair-raising adrenaline of falling at terminal velocity, she would have been overwhelmed with frustration at how this situation was proceeding exactly as before toward a very painful failure.

  Once she was just a few dozen feet from the King’s audience chamber, however, Lucy noted that her fall speed did seem to have slowed. Not enough for a painless landing, but enough to be a notable difference from her first return. This thought, however, was quickly eclipsed by the impact of landing on her front on a cloud platform and having the wind kicked out of her yet again.

  “There is improvement this time,” said the King, “even if the final result obscures it.”

  Lucy lay groaning on her stomach for a few moments before clambering up to her feet, stabbing her Ideal’s blade down into the cloud platform, and leaning on it as she caught her breath. “I…I think so, too. I guess it’s from the few extra points I put into Ideation alignment?”

  The King nodded. “And this approach will improve as you are further aligned along that Axis. Alternatively, you may consider different approaches that adhere more to your Primary Axis.”

  Lucy looked at him, panting but wide-eyed. “With Understanding? How would that work?”

  The King stretched his arms out to the sides with his hands open. Lucy realized this was a shrugging motion, though such a small and ordinary gesture looked funny due to the King’s large stature and slow movements. “I am afraid I cannot provide new ideas myself. This is something that must be left to each Dream Knight’s ingenuity.”

  “Okay, I understand.” So much for the King’s helpfulness, Lucy thought. In his tone, she could sense a slight bit of friendly joking, and his face once again had the faintest impression of a warm smile.

  After taking a few more moments to regain her bearings and let the aching subside, Lucy stepped up a little closer to the King and spoke, hints of desperation and frustration leaking into her words: “That Dream was too dark. I couldn’t see anything. And…I almost died because of that.”

  The King bowed his head head in sympathy. “There are a number of Dreams that are entirely inhospitable to human life, whether Dreamer or Dream Knight. Such Dreams are rare, as most Dreamers will subconsciously desire a world where they are able to at least exist. But in truth, there is no limit to the barriers a Dream might impose on a Dream Knight.”

  “That makes sense,” said Lucy, affirming how one of the defining characteristics of a Dream was that anything was possible. “Then if this Dream won’t let me see anything, I’ll just have to bend the rules to let me see.”

  The King regarded her silently, again with that fleetingly faint smile. Surely, he already knew what she was going to ask:

  “Can I see all the Feats that allow me to see in the dark, or make light appear? And only the ones with alignment requirements close to my current alignments.”

  The King nodded. “Absolutely, you may.”

  He swept his arm out in a wide arc and soon a trio of bubbles blew in with the wind, floating and bobbing in front of Lucy. They each housed a possible means to an end, a Feat that would provide a practical (if fantastical) solution to a concrete problem, yet Lucy couldn’t help but feel a childlike joy seeing them sway lightly back and forth in the air, their shining forms inviting her to peer in and claim whatever was inside as her own. It was like opening a fortune cookie or a Kinder Surprise egg, and getting to relive this experience every time she returned from a Dream sounded like a small but delightful incentive to keep going.

  Doing her best to contain her curiosity and excitement, Lucy stepped up to the bubble furthest to her left and looked inside. A miniature knight stood in complete darkness, not unlike the Dream Lucy had narrowly escaped moments ago. The knight stood facing her at first, but then turned around and walked about the bubble domain in different directions. As they did so, everything within the knight’s immediate field of vision became visible, from walls to unlit torches to savage beasts lurking in the shadows that the knight promptly dispatched with their sword. This Feat’s plaque read:

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Dark Vision (10 metres) - Grants the ability to see entities in the dark up to 10 metres ahead.[Always Active] [12 Ideation, 12 Rebellion]

  Lucy’s eyes went wide upon reading the alignment requirements. Ideation made sense, but a Rebellion requirement came as a surprise. At most, Lucy supposed this was due to “defying” the all-encompassing effect of total darkness and how it robbed one of sight. When she thought back to how oppressive the darkness had been in that Dream, she supposed it did make sense after all.

  However, she was disappointed that this Feat, which would seemingly be perfect for her current roadblock, had a relatively high alignment requirement for both of those Axes. As she remembered, her current alignments were:

  Ideation: 5

  Understanding: 11

  Rebellion: 4

  Even if she were to put everything she had into Ideation and Rebellion at the next alignment update, it wouldn’t be enough to reach 12 points for both of them. And even if it were possible, it would end up changing her Primary Axis since her Understanding alignment was at 11. With both of these caveats, this dark vision Feat didn’t seem like a feasible option for the near future.

  Sighing, Lucy stepped back and went to the next Feat bubble. Inside, a miniature knight, standing in a dark void, held their hand over their heads, pointing up with their index finger. At their fingertip, a small white flame appeared, quickly growing to about the size of the knight’s head. When the knight brought their hand back down, the white flame remained floating above their head. The light the flame cast was far greater than what its small size would suggest, as a radius of several metres around the knight was illuminated to clearly show grass and trees and all sorts of vegetation. The plaque for this Feat read:

  Conjure Light (Small) - Conjure a light source that follows along and illuminates a radius of 20 metres for 10 minutes. [2 minutes] [10 Ideation]

  Lucy stepped back, thinking. Unlike the previous Feat, this one was attainable within her next alignment update. On top of that, its distance of effect was twice as good. However, there were some drawbacks, with the immediately apparent one being its usage frequency. The dark vision Feat was always active, but this light source Feat only lasted ten minutes and then had a two-minute cooldown. What if it wore off in the middle of a fight? Would Lucy be able to survive two whole minutes while being effectively blind? The mere consideration made Lucy gulp.

  Besides that, there was the problem of how conspicuous it was. In Dreams where this Feat would create the only source of light, Lucy would be attaching an obvious siren to the top of her head that would draw the eyes of everyone and everything nearby. In that pitch-black Dream, she had been lucky that her attacker hadn’t seen her until she was close to her starting point. But if she’d had a big, bright light above her head announcing where she was? No doubt she would be chased no matter where she was.

  Still, it was an option she could feasibly attain soon, and one that wouldn’t change her Primary Axis. Keeping it in mind, she went over to the final Feat bubble.

  Unlike the other bubble realms, which featured a miniature knight, this one contained just a sword against a void of pure darkness. The sword’s blade pulsated with light, then a beam emitted from the blade’s tip. The beam lit up stone walls and floors at a range longer than the previous two Feats, although the field-of-vision offered by it was much narrower. Still, there was something captivating about the imagery of the sword lit up with pure and brilliant light, a soulfulness and purposefulness that wasn’t present in the other two Feats. Lucy had to stop herself from staring so she could read the plaque:

  Concentrated Illumination - Emit a beam of light from one’s Ideal that illuminates up to 30 metres ahead. The beam lasts for as long as the wielder focuses on it; losing conscious thought of the beam causes it to end. [5 seconds] [15 Understanding]

  Lucy stepped back and crossed her arms. This was Feat was essentially a flashlight, except instead of running on batteries, it ran on concentration and focus. The drawbacks were easily apparent: losing focus in the heat of battle or when surprised, the five-second cooldown that could prove fatal in life-or-death situations, and the limited periphery range of the light beam. But at the same time, the longer distance would be very useful, and the thought of pouring her focus and lifeline into her Ideal so that it could show her the way forward made Lucy’s heart flutter: such a classically heroic image, of the mystical sword guiding the way and cutting through the malevolent darkness.

  Calming herself back down, Lucy looked out across the three Feat bubbles. It was between the latter two Feats, with her current preference leaning toward Concentrated Illumination. However, she still had until her next alignment update to decide, so there was no pressure to be hasty now. What mattered right now, was that she had confirmed she had options for going back and tackling that Dream of absolute darkness.

  As she recalled that nightmarish Dream, Lucy turned and looked across the audience chamber at the two doors to Dreams. Cole’s door stood closed neatly and quietly, just as before. The new door also stood where it was before—but with its frame swung wide open to spill out several feet of black mist. Lucy gasped as she realized it wasn’t mist.

  It was the darkness itself, from that Dream, creeping into her own.

  “Why,” Lucy stammered to the King, “why is that door open?”

  The King regarded Lucy with a faint impression of a solemn frown, then turned and looked at the door in question. “This is a phenomenon known as Encroachment. For as long as a Dream Knight leaves a Dream they have entered unfulfilled, their connection to that Dream will remain active within their subconscious. Because the psychological link between the Dreamer and the Dream Knight is quite powerful, the unfulfilled Dream will gradually influence the Dream Knight’s Final Dream. In many cases, this causes entities and other effects to manifest within the Final Dream.”

  Lucy’s throat went dry as she continued staring at the encroaching darkness, the King’s explanation having confirmed what she had thought of and feared. “So if I leave that Dream alone for too long, this whole place will be plunged into darkness?”

  “It is difficult to say how a Dream’s Encroachment will progress,” said the King, holding his chin, “but if darkness was the primary feature of the Dream you entered, then your theory is likely to be true.”

  Lucy nodded, feeling her heart sink. The way the King mentioned Encroachments “progressing” made it sound like a fatal illness, slowly but surely decimating a body from the inside out with no recourse. Lucy’s memory of the weeks and months leading up to her Final Dream were still too hazy to discern, but thinking about an illness leading to inevitable demise was enough to make her eyes sting with the pinprick of tears, especially as she gazed at the open door and imagined the small amount of horrible, tainting darkness gradually deteriorating the entire world of her Dream.

  “You need not fret so soon,” said the King, his tone knowing and calm. “The rate of an Encroachment’s progress is heavily determined by your consideration of the corresponding Dream. If you were to remain thinking about the Dream for a long, uninterrupted period of time, the Encroachment would progress rapidly. However, because you will be focusing on subsequent Dreams and their unique problems, the Encroaching Dream will likely be pushed to your subconscious or even unconscious mind, where it will progress at a far slower rate.”

  Lucy breathed a sigh of relief, but she took stock of the King’s word choice at the end. “So I can slow it down, but I can’t stop it completely?”

  “That is correct. For a Dream, once travelled, cannot be completely discarded from mind. It will always remain, at the very least, within unconscious thought, the connection between the Dream Knight and Dreamer always active, even if fleetingly.”

  Lucy nodded, her gaze moving from the King back to the open door. She couldn’t deny the fact that, no matter how much she’d struggle against it, the Dream of pure darkness and its Dreamer would remain at the back of her mind until (and if) she rescued them. It wasn’t unlike how Kathy had always hovered over her thoughts, like an ever-present cloud, even though they were a year and a city distance away from each other.

  Lucy brought her gaze down to her feet and held her gloved hand up to her chest. The aching in her heart she would often feel in those quiet gaps between work and school hours…Was that the feeling of Kathy’s unfulfilled dream encroaching upon her?

  A dam broke, within Lucy’s soul—but stubbornness and resilience rose against it, reverberating through the armour that weighed on her. She was aware of that feeling now, but instead of letting it consume her, she would keep going, keep growing stronger, so that she could put an end to that encroaching heartache once and for all. This was easier said than done, but it was all she could do to keep her motivation from shattering. Better to do as the King had described and keep that pernicious pain out of mind by continuing to venture forth and help the people she could right now.

  “I understand,” Lucy said at last. “I’d like to proceed to another Dream.”

  “As you wish,” the King said with a nod.

  He stretched his open palm out to the far corner of his audience chamber, where the two existing doors stood. Otherworldly light gathered from every direction and condensed at a spot beside the door leading to the Dream of darkness. Soon, the solid white faded away to reveal a new door. Lucy gave the King a quick nod, then made her way to the new door to inspect it.