Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 429

Chapter 429: Searching for the man of your dreams
Mia took her uncle’s hand, still pushing away the cloudiness of her lingering dream. Well, this still was a dream. But. Now she knew it.

“What do you need?” She asked, ready to be of help with whatever was called for. “Are you… part of my dream?”

Did she want to help so badly that she’d conjured a dream of Uncle Trace coming to ask her for help? Her head throbbed a bit from trying to unravel that thought.

“No,” He chuckled, “I’m not part of your dream, but I can’t linger here long, and if you disobey me even a little I’ll throw you right back in here, understand?”

“I understand!” She cried readily. “I’ll be good! Let me help with whatever you need!”

He nodded in slight satisfaction and then pulled her with him.

“Are you taking me into the Emperor’s dream to find the way?” She tried not to sound too excited at the prospect. What a helpful thing she could do!

“Absolutely not,” He turned, frowning. “I want to see if you can find the way from here, from inside your dream, and if not, from the void between dreams.”

“The void…” Mia blinked. “There are places between dreams?”

She’d never been there. Uncle Trace had visited her dreams once, when she was fleeing from him, and then a handful of times as a child when she asked if he could come play with her in her sleep.

A stubborn child, she’d refused to go to bed unless he promised to come visit and continue their games! Bedtime was a better chore when you had the lure of good fun to be had after falling asleep.

But they’d always stayed within hers, and he created games and slides and such.

“Just… one sort of large… you’ll see,” Trace sighed. “Can you find the way from here?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head ‘no’. Trace sighed.

“All right, then come along.”

Mia kept up with her uncle until they came to a flat, translucent wall. He paused, glancing at her, before stepping through. Trying to be brave, she pushed aside her trepidation and followed him… into nothing!

She gasped with fear when she saw there was no ground beneath her feet. She’d heard of powers to do with flying, but she always imagined there being land somewhere below.

This seemed more like swimming in a sea where there was no bottom. Where fathomless horrors could come from anywhere, snapping at her feet without a sound.

Not that she’d ever experienced such a thing, except perhaps in a nightmare.

Trembling with fear, she tried to tamp it down and be brave.

“It’s fine. There’s nothing out here,” Her uncle’s voice calmed her. “Well, except that. But nothing’s escaped from it today.”

Mia tore her eyes from below her feet, where eternal nothingness extended indefinitely.

She had to blink several times to see what had been right in front of her.

Somehow seeming more gargantuan than the nothingness, a sphere of violence loomed larger than the sun.

“That’s… his dream?” Mia’s mouth went dry. She had bravely done many things on this journey, but being asleep put a new and more terrifying spin on reality–well, non-reality. Sort of.

Her head spun, and she tried to clear it.

“That’s his dream. Entering it isn’t the problem… Finding him and then getting out is the problem. And I can’t guarantee that I could. So I want you to try finding the path to him from here. If you can, and tell me step by step, that would be an enormous help.”

Mia stared for a long moment before closing her eyes to concentrate.

“I’m looking for the dreamer in that thing?” She clarified.

“Yes. Please.” Uncle Trace confirmed, squeezing her hand.

Gently, yet firmly, she decided to find the dreamer. The Emperor.

Nothing happened.

Opening her eyes, she sniffed indignantly.

“Can we go a bit closer?” She looked at her uncle expectantly. She didn’t want to be a single step closer to that violent-looking place, but maybe if she could see inside, she could look for a path beginning from somewhere she could see more clearly.

That could work, couldn’t it?

“Not too close,” He warned. “I’m trying to keep anything from getting out, but sometimes… things do.”

“But they appear in the real world, not here… right?” Mia chewed the inside of her cheek in thought.

“It’s complicated, but the answer is a mix of both.” Trace told her, pulling on her hand. “That’s how I was able to send a dream to ride on the storm.”

They flew through the void, closer to the red sphere. Ever closer. Just how enormous was it? It loomed in her vision, taking up almost all of it. Terrifying her heart.

But she looked not at the edge anymore, but the inside. Mia could make out human-like shapes, darting around and diving into deep water, where some tentacled creature snatched them into its jaws.

“What is it even dreaming??” She cried in alarm.

Trace grimaced. “Do I need to take you back? You don’t need to do this. To see all this.”

“No, no, I can do this. I can try,” She said. “The path, the visions, don’t include living things in them along the way.”

Did the dream-people count as living? She had no idea. She knew that the path through the castle hadn’t included any of the wights!

Closing her eyes again, she pulled up a mental image of the area around the dream-lake in the Emperor’s dream.

Carefully, determined, she chose to find the dreamer. The Emperor.

This time, her mind took off like a shot. Away from the lake, through the city streets, across great swaths of land and towards a mountain. The top of a mountain.

No… towards the far side of the mountain, over it, and then down into a chasm. Her mind stuttered against the darkness. Rebelled against it, but she pressed onward, squinting into what she could not see.

It was far down. Very far.

The Emperor, the enormous fiend who was keen on destroying the human world, appeared before her.

Mia’s eyes snapped open with a gasp, and Trace took her by the shoulders, looking into her eyes with concern.

“What was it? Did it hurt you somehow?”

“No…” She bit her lip. “But I’m afraid you might be walking into a trap.”