Back Again: Chapter 8

It was a bright early morning when he woke up in a barracks. Taking a moment to reorient himself from waking up in an unfamiliar place, Alex hobbled outside carefully to not wake up the other men in the barracks.

Steve was out cold across from him, and he let him rest. Outside, he found himself on the inner side of the wall that separated the wealth disparity. The barracks was made in the wall and the whole guards station was built into the thick walls.

Just as he was about to go wandering about, a soldier spotted and marched towards him.

"Alexios?" Alex nodded, "Follow me."

"Can I get something to eat?" Alec asked.

"That can wait." The soldier then went silent.

He took him to a tent that was not there the previous night, a perimeter of guards surrounded it in oddly coloured armour. Their stares bored into him as he approached.

The flaps were blocked by two burly guards with halberds.

"Bringing over citizen Alex on the orders of Officer Damian to the general." The soldier shouted and from inside the tent there was a voice.

"Come in." The guards stepped aside and let them in.

Inside was a spacious tent with trophies - various species of taxidermied swarmlings - and weapons on racks. At the centre of a tent was a giant table with scrolls and books atop them, various men and women flitted over them, swiping through the entries.

Just behind that table was a cross where Bismark was nailed on, two people looking at it and a third one trailing a knife over its skin.

The soldier saluted and instantly went outside. Unsure, he shuffled in place and waited for someone to acknowledge him.

"What's your assessment Doctor?" One of the two observing the corpse, a short man in casual clothes asked. He had no weapon on him, and every finger had plain rings on them.

Beside him was a woman that easily dwarfed everyone in the room both in height and width, on her back was a gargantuan sword.

"Tough carapace, strong lithe muscles and the face is nearly identical to that of a human." The doctor gently brushed his fingers along the monstrous contours of the corpse. "I have a hunch though that this is just a prototype."

"What makes you say that?" The short man asked.

"Too inelegant, there is a sort of artistry and brutal efficiency in the creations of the swarm. A single minded focus that is plain visible in its biological structure." The doctor then pulled back the skin flaps on the corpse's stomach, revealing all manner of organs. "Some of these organs are plain out useless or not even connected to the bloodstream, this right here is from a cow and beside is the hollow bones of a swallow."

"They are experimenting." The short man nodded to the doctor. "Thank you doctor."

The doctor bowed and made out of the tent. Alex stared at the corpse and tried to not retch at the black organs almost spilling out.

The general regarded the monster for a few more moments before he turned and set his eyes on Alex.

"Come child." The general waved to him, Alex hurried over. The short man sat behind his desk and the giant shadowed him. Now closer, he could see that the man was mundane, a face that would disappear in the crowd, while his bodyguard was the opposite with cat-like eyes and protruding fangs.

"Greetings?" Alex kept his hands - one hand at least, the other was limp - to hide his anxiety.

"Relax, I only want to ask some questions." The man graced him with an easy smile. "You've done a great deed for The City by discovering this skin-stealer."

"It was all on accident, I didn't even know she was…" Alex kept his eyes on the man, eager to not stare into the eyes of the brutish woman.

"Nonetheless, you've uncovered a serious security risk." The man threaded his fingers through his balding head. "I've gotten the report from officer Damian about what you said, is there anything else you would like to add?"

"Steve was her, its, boyfriend." Alex remarked, then a memory came to the fore. "There was this one time I was leaving my job when I saw her looking at the construction site, she disappeared in the next second so I just assumed it was my imagination."

"Where do you work?" The general asked.

"On this sector, the huge construction with the ring of marble flagstone." Alex scratched his scalp and laughed weakly. "I forgot its name, sorry."

"Ah." The general clicked his tongue. "The Thunder project, that would make sense. Yes, that would make a lot of sense. Alright boy, you can go back to your home or continue resting in the barracks, we will be waiting for your friend to wake up and this whole debacle should be over for you."

"Thank you." Alex bowed and made to leave.

"One moment, take these." Five gold coins were pushed towards him, Alex was about to reject. "This is an order, take them."

"Thank you again." Alex grabbed the coins and kept a death grip on them as he elft the tent.

He walked around the place in a daze, his palms open to the glittering gold of his reward? Yes, reward. He could do so much with this amount of coins, perhaps renovate the house again? Buy a new house altogether?

The possibilities were endless, yet he couldn't fathom them right this instant. His mind was in shambles, from the shock of discovering Bismark was a mobster to this sudden windfall, he was left confused.

Alex checked up on Steve and seeing him still knocked out cold, dithered around the camp before proceeding to returning to his house.

The walk back was tense as he regarded every passerby with a glare, his hand firmly clutched around the coins. His arm throbbed with pain with every step he took, he could feel his bones scraping agaisn't each other.

The medic last night from what little he remembered before passing out, had described it as a clean break and it would heal fine as long as he didn't use it. That was great, but he really hated it at the moment. Suddenly having one less appendage to control was jarring, and in a moment of clarity, he remembered his doubling.

Could he make himself heal twice as fast? The healer said it would take from three to two months. With some upgrades he could reduce that to a month, and to half a month.

Was it worth it though when he could have used those upgrades to be a better mage? He didn't know, he will have to see if the injury is a major problem.

He met his mother at the door where she was worrying, after assuring her that everything was fine despite his broken arm, he went to his room. His uncle was not in, yet he left a vial on the newly made desk between their beds.

"I shouldn't do this." Despite it, he uncorked the Essence of the Dreamer and lay down on his cot, until his senses left him and he was immersed in the Dream.

—

"You like that don't you?" The rain of kisses trailed up from his groin and emerged as a mop of brilliant red hair with emerald green eyes and a most devilish smile. "Talk to me Alex."

Alexios regarded the woman, the apparition, the figment of his imagination with a glare. There was something odd about her, he had seen this girl a thousand times already through prior experience, but today there was something different.

Nobody knew where the memories had come from, other than that of the Princess and The King which had led to him unlocking the doubling. The same essences were produced and there were little variations in the process.

His addiction before had made him intimately familiar with the scenarios and women in the dreams, so now he could feel that there was something strange. It was at the tip of his tongue, at the edge of sight, and it made the normally satisfying experience frustrating. He couldn't get into the mood with that slight annoyance hounding him.

"What's your name?" Alex asked as he rose from the fur bedroll and exited the hide tent.

"Huh?" The redhead turned her head cutely, coils of hair perfectly framing her beautiful wild face. "That doesn't matter, come over here and let me pleasure you my hubby."

Alex stayed silent as he surveyed the calm forest. There was so much green, splatterings of brown amid leaves and the occasional animal call in the distance. It felt serene, idyllic, and perfect.

Opening his mage sight, he swam in the river of purpose this forest exuded. Every leaf, every blade of grass, every animal in perfect harmony. The mana wasn't purposeful, not unified like that of the distinct personality of Song or the overwhelming hunger of Bismark, it was a thousand voices all singing in a choir of harmony.

Even the dream apparition in the form of a woman was just part of the flow, integrated into it as the voice of fertility and growth.

He was the only disturbance, an off-balance note, the foreign element.

That wasn't what he wanted, so he let his mana extend its golden tendrils into his body and changed the tone of his mana. He relaxed into it, not giving direction to his mana self and letting it do whatever alterations it could.

Then, slowly, he felt himself rising into the air. The resonance between him and this dreamer realm negated his imaginary wait and rid him of his own perceptions of gravity. He felt warm inside as he got embraced by the wild harmonic energies of this dream.

In the instances of lucidity, he wondered how there was so much mana when the vial itself only held a miniscule amount. From his vantage point he could see a vast expanse of forest, all natural, animal calls were frequent but he couldn't see any of them. There was so much mana though, and he knew if he destroyed something that the mana would lose its purpose and return to the rainbow fog characteristic of the Dreamer.

He could feel in his body as the vial's effect began to recede, a change in the tone of the choir, the end of the song. Gradually beneath him the whole forest dissipated into rainbow fog, the redhead smiled and waved at him as she dissolved and eventually even the sky turned rainbow.

The moment between being in the rainbow fog and returning back to reality was extremely brief, instantaneous for lesser minds. But in that small moment, he caught the barest glimpse of something in the rainbow fog, a giant purposeful mana clump pervading the Dreamer's realm.

It bore down on him and he felt choked, the instant stretched on for what felt like an eternity before there was a release and he was sent back to the corporeal plane.

"What was that?" Alex shook his head as he dealt with a brief headache from the odd thing in the dream. "I think it's time to ask some questions about the Essence of The Dreamer, can't go to work anyways so best time to do it."

Rising up, he changed his clothes into something more drab and a couple of silvers. He deposited his new golden wealth beneath a floor board where he hid his silvers, only he knew of the hidden stash, he didn't want his uncle to steal something to fuel his addiction.

"I will be going out for a while mom, do you need anything when I come back?" He asked her, while also stealthily pocketing the butcher's knife from the kitchen.

"Vegetables would be grand." His mother replied. He made it out of his house and steered towards the outskirts of the sector, where he knew his former dealer was lurking.