Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 422

Chapter 422: Getting out
Trace felt better knowing that Anaisa was awake, and safe… as safe as one could be next to a sleeping homicidal monarch whose dreams could become reality without warning.

Safer than inside the homicidal maniac’s dream, at any rate.

“What’s going to hurt?” Ben tensed beside Trace.

“This,” Trace dashed forward, directly at the firming barrier at the edge of the dream.

He could hear the Emperor’s roar behind them, the heat of the enormous being’s breath on the back of his neck.

This was all illusion, in a way, but very real in another, more imminent sense.

Usually, leaving a dream was like passing through the edge of a bubble, tenuous and barely noticeable.

This was like hitting a wall at a dead run. Trace strained, pushing Ben ahead of him. The wall gave, little by little, cracking and protesting the attempt to breach it.

Time was short. Trace could wake himself, but he couldn’t wake Ben. He should have asked Anaisa–

“What’s happening?” Ben shook his head rapidly, disoriented.

“I’m trying to get you out,” Trace told him tightly, but Ben shook his head again.

“I meant, who’s calling my name?” He seemed dazed, and Trace’s eyes widened.

“They’re trying to wake you. Wake up. Get out, now.” The dreamwalker urged. “Wake up!!”

He shook the princess’s husband by the shoulders, and the man dissolved into thin air. Breathing a sigh of relief, Trace turned to face the looming Emperor, closed his eyes, and forced himself to wake up.

Gasping, Trace sat up and grabbed his chest, hating the ache there. He’d woken himself up prematurely already once recently, when Anaisa had arrived back. To do it again so soon was extremely unpleasant.

A sharp pain ran through his left arm, and he grimaced, laying back down and trying to breathe evenly.

“Ow,” He whispered, more to himself than anyone else. A small concession to the extreme discomfort of the moment.

“Trace, Trace are you all right??” Anaisa came to his side. “I woke Ben, in case you couldn’t get him out. Did that hurt you? Did the Emperor–”

“I’ll be all right,” Trace assured her with a weak smile. “Help me sit up?”

Given a task, Anaisa applied herself to it ardently. Looping one arm beneath him, she pulled him upward until he could face the Emperor again.

The sleeping hulk’s dream world was still very visible to Trace.

And it was not calm.

Reaching out a hand, He pressed on the part of the barrier he’d cracked, trying to hold in the horrors that the Emperor now flung against it, stretching the boundaries and threatening to unleash new terror into the human world.

Breathing heavily, Trace managed to contain it, for now.

“Let’s… let him… think,” Trace fought against the fatigue.

“Illness,” The familiar wight’s voice intoned behind him.

“Yes, I have illness, you’ve been working me nonstop,” Trace snapped.

“Forest,” The wight responded, moving towards Trace and making a shrill sound that the man knew would summon some others to carry him.

They moved far more quickly than he could walk. Whenever his magic was at dire straits, the wights took him down to the forest. It seemed like they would do so again now.

How they detected how low his magic was, he didn’t exactly know. But since they could suppress magic as well, he wasn’t terribly surprised.

“Is using this much magic healthy?” Anaisa searched his eyes. “Poor Mia almost suffered a breakdown walking through the forest!”

Trace’s eyes shot to his niece, who looked to one side shyly. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“You weren’t fine,” Ford reminded her with a frown. “Trace is obviously coping better than you did with the overflow of excess magic, but it still must be taxing for him in the extreme.”

Trace sighed. “There’s nothing for it until this is all solved. I’ll do what I must.”

The world couldn’t end. The dreams couldn’t escape. No one else’s powers could contain the impending disaster. It all fell to him, so the consequences of doing what was necessary weren’t important to him at the moment.

“Keep down,” The wight ordered Denholm, who glared back.

“What do you think I’ve been doing? They go around messing about in the Emperor’s head, riling him up, and I’m out here working hard to keep them from wrecking everything! Thankless job, this. I’m half a mind to quit and walk away.”

No one paid the blackguard’s words any mind.

The group of wights appeared, and lifted Trace with freezing hands. He hated how cold the things were. It wasn’t natural.

“I’m coming!” Anaisa cried, coming to his side. She shivered and recoiled from the wights’ closeness, but Trace shook his head.

“I’ll be right back,” He winked, and she pouted. “Don’t let anything happen while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try to keep people from murdering each other,” She vowed lightly, but snuck a glance at Denholm. “Not my best, but I’ll try.”

He managed a chuckle. Oh, how he’d missed her. Taken for granted how even the worst situations were lighter with her around.

The wights, impatient for him to continue his work, though they would never express it, whisked him off and down to the forest.

The flow of magic back into his body was restorative in one sense, and exhausting in another. He wasn’t made to handle this much. Perhaps he wasn’t made to handle any, but that wasn’t exactly his choice.

Not that this was either.

The moral complexities of whether humans should have ever been able to acquire magic in the first place was one of many subjects he pondered to pass the time here, when he wasn’t confronted with some imminent threat to his life and the world as he knew it.

As they entered the forest, the wights paused for a moment. Trace had one arm around each of two wights, with another behind him in case he should fall, he supposed. Or to guard him in case he decided to run away.

A bit of motion caught his eye, and he turned to see a familiar face.

“Father?”