The Dreamscape: The Darkside

Sleep proved unbearable sometimes. To lie down on the cold floor of the Clocktower, among the moving, silent gears, reminded Gray too much of what he had lost. The gears had not truly gone silent – Nina would have commented on the change - They were just beyond his hearing. Yet to go away meant heart-rending dread, yearning for the one thing in the world that had fully understood him; that he had understood. The Clocktower had broken Gray so artfully.

So the little cave in the limestone cliff was Gray's compromise. It sheltered him when he could no longer bear the pain. Yet, when he needed to, he could simply roll over on his stone bench, and reassuringly find the black Tower through the opening just a stone's throw away. Occasionally, blankets or rugs would spontaneously appear in his cell. Sometimes, the man could follow cause and effect enough to know that Nina was worried about him. Regardless, he neatly rolled them up and put them to the side. He could not tell his former apprentice, just as he could not tell her about the missing tick-tock, that he was weaker even than she'd thought.

He could not tell her that he couldn't handle blankets because they felt WRONG. When people's minds long for safety, they cling to the familiar. Gray, even more than most, had a deep need of having things 'just so'. Millimetrically precise, perfectly weighed, his. This world, it wasn't his. So he slept on his back, fully dressed, as if in armour. The limestone was roughly polished – a castle's wall, turned inside out. The weather was mostly kind enough to allow his fancy, and when it was not, the man rapidly slipped in and out of dream.

He had not spoken to Nina about the times he'd fallen into other people's dreams. Once, she would know, someone had almost died. He had not told her that after she released him from the Clocktower, it happened again. For to do so would risk actually talking to his former apprentice, beyond the basics of daily life. It would risk starting a conversation about what exactly they represented to each other now.

It was easier to dig his cave, cook the food that Nina caught out of a budding frustration that she never grilled fish statistically, and not think about it. Gray had structured his mind to break in layers under the Clocktower's weight; he was good at not thinking about things.

However, as the former assassin, executioner and torturer of the Azure Archipelago well knew, just because you ignore things, they don't exactly go away...

A day, like any other. Better. He had exhausted himself by picking away at the limestone, and nearly pushed himself beyond his limits by adventuring that information when Nina asked. When he lay down on his rocky bench, it was the most content he'd felt in a while. He closed his eyes.

Perhaps it was familiarity. Perhaps it was magic. Maybe it was pain. But something drew Gray's spirit, that had gotten unmoored earlier, away.

He found himself in front of a door. It was a door he knew. On the other side, many times, he had broken people. It was what you did. He opened the door, and found himself in an unfamiliar room.

A man was tied to a solid wooden board (had to be solid, Gray judged, to cope with potential convulsions), tilted such that a dark-cloaked figure could easily work on his face. One of the victim's eyes, a beautiful emerald green, was pinned open in place by magic. Tick-tick-tick, reassuringly, a needle contraption in black-gloved hands pierced the surface of the iris. Tick-tick-tock, dots of light, of magic, were left behind. Glimmers on a gem.

Gray remained silent. To interrupt such painstaking work would risk damaging the canvas.

He wondered, rather miffed, what the other dark-cloaked man was doing in his room.

In silence, he looked around to find his bearings. The bound man, Gray now saw, had scars on his chest. Familiar. Yet not something he'd caused, something niggling in the back of his mind told him. He would have to consider previous injuries, the torturer reflex kicked in, when working on a person. Those damned guards...Then Gray looked up at the victim's face, and the realization of exactly who it was that had been worked on struck him.

As that happened, Gray awoke inside the dream. It would be an odd sensation for others, as an uninteresting shadow of a bookcase became a man in cloak the colour of soot. With a tilt of the head, the hood fell over his shoulders, revealing glass-sharp eyes, white hair caught at the back, and a face considerably less sunburnt than the last time he and the victim had met. The ticking had stopped.

“Ah.” He said, to no one in particular. “Is this where you keep the poisons?”

The door closed behind him.

The chamber was bare stone, windowless, perhaps underground. Only a few shelves and cabinets, plain and functional, occupied the walls. They were lit by a glow that seemed to come from all around. Gray slipped by the wall in the direction the masked man had indicated, to give himself time to think. It was the first time that someone other than the dreamer interacted with him. Although perhaps that too was Alden's consciousness, broken into torturer and victim. Gray himself was familiar with nightmares in which he was powerless, made and broken once more, made and broken, made and broken all over again.

He was clenching a lockpick between thumb and forefinger before checking that the cabinet door was even locked. A clink, before he'd even realized he opened it. He should leave, he thought, considering the masked man's words. That Alden had similar nightmares felt like intruding on something too personal.

Yet the bottles and vials on the black oak were calling to him. Their matte sheen hinted at expensive clear glass, dusted over. When he reached for one, its contents trickled syrupy with age. He struggled to read the labels, but they dissolved into gibberish. Even the colours inside seemed to shift when he looked away. Had he reached the edge of the dream? At the masked man's warning, he simply grabbed a smaller vial, assuming its contents strong, and popped off the lid. But he did not leave.

Downing the contents, Gray walked towards the main stage. And waited.

His throat burned. His temples crackled, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. For a moment, he could feel within his breast the boy's pain, and the masked man's delight at it, as if they were his own. Yet slowly, his emotions faded, leaving him clear-headed and with a throbbing headache, as if he'd ran up a mountain in pure morning air. Ah. It was that, then.

He could have made himself unseen, but he remained there, a dark, inconvenient witness. He commented not on the boy, or on the craftsmanship of the runes. Not until the masked man called Pride turned to talk to him.

“Ser.” Gray's voice was firm. “You misunderstand me.” Yet he found himself moving closer, not even walking but somehow finding himself in the other chair, for it was his role, wasn't it, and dreams were ruled by habit more than by any conscious choices one might by day take. He found his own needle in his hand, a curved one, and found himself explaining: “Pain is an art. A universal emotion, some say, but it requires a deep understanding of people in order to fully draw it out.”

Distractedly, he wondered if this Pride was the real one, and Alden but a dream, for the mists had showed they minded not time or death.

There was a kernel of wrongness in his stomach as he twisted the needle in his hands. In the way that a chef would side-eye a glutton, Gray did not trust Pride. Had they met before...?, and there were other suggestions that Gray did not like, of what he himself was or how he felt. Suggestions that aimed to control. Gray clung on to the bitter kernel of feeling. He could not dismiss the thoughts outright – for in order to negate, the mind first has to imagine, and the dreaming mind may be too tired to make that second step. All the man could do for now was maintain control over his own self. He was who he was, and-

'You, Ser, are a liar.'

From one of his pockets, Gray pulled out a contraption of metal and glass, with overlapping lenses, that he attached in front of his eyes. He could see the magic clearly then, forgetting that his betrayal of the Tower had cut him off from this wonder. He could see wisps of light, and the way the runes connected across Alden's body. So clever. So cruel. The boy would never be able to control them. The ink wasn't magical, as he'd first thought – the tiny scars left by the needle simply carved a path for the victim's remarkable inner life-force to flow in, at which point it became self-reinforcing. The ink was merely a guide.

“Shaping people, however, is more of a science.” Gray continued, calmly. “I would personally limit the flights of fancy to the absolutely necessary.” He looked deep into the boy's eyes. “Trust me on that.” His gloved fingers patted his hair. The tip of the curved needle struck the cornea. Tap-tap-tap, gently, up and down, without even bothering to reach for the ink. As far as anyone could guess, he was continuing the rune pattern with a sharp, precise hand. For a minute or two, he was deep in focus, only pausing occasionally to brush the boy's forehead with his sleeve and remind him that he was doing great.

“Yet, somehow, I find I must congratulate you on your obvious results.” He finally turned to Pride again. “Alden has surpassed my own apprentices in an important way. The last test that a weapon has to pass.”

His tone betrayed nothing.

“...to defeat its predecessors.” Gray spoke. “You must be so proud. For you are dead, and I am not.”

Gray's smile was a dangerous one. In dreams, words have power.

“I think you promised an explanation.”

No, that was wrong.

No man would have a soul strong enough to fuel those runes. No normal soul. Even with multiplying graphemes, of which Gray could glimpse a violent-purple one inscribed onto Alden's nape of the neck, the risk of bursting into a pile of ashes would be great...

(then again, the runes were somewhat distorted from what he was used to-)

...Unless the runes were connected to some-place else. Just like the wire he had woven into Nina. The thought clicked into place like burning-cold metal through flesh. Tap-tap-tap, his work continued. Pride droned on. Yet the longer Gray continued, the more he found himself distracted by an itch in his off-hand.

Gradually, the sensation became unbearable. He pulled down his sleeve.

On the inside of a white forearm, there was a scar of two letters that he had etched in to remember. A name. He did not remember the letters being mouths.

Toothed and black-mawed, they gnawed at the edge of the scar. He pulled his sleeve back up.

“Just a mystery itch.” He quietly excused himself.

An itch for mysteries. He nodded towards Pride to continue.

If that person was interested, it could mean everything and nothing. Gray knew he may have already lost. He may have blinded Alden, or led to Naoki's death beside him. Everything could happen in dreams, and the path he took, squelching with magic, had even fewer boundaries. No control. Yet all he said in the end was:

“Why?”

His hand stopped, one finger resting on Alden's eyebrow. Like many of his clients, Pride didn't realize that the verdict had already been made. Yet he may still offer information.

Quietly, with difficulty, as if the words were not quite words any longer, Gray asked.

“Are you of the Tower?”

The last word broke in his mouth. His magic-sense flickered off.

It felt almost that for as long as he'd played Pride's part, the dream could lumber on. Whether it was trying to absorb him in it, Gray could not quite tell. All he could do was act from reflex. The needle sunk deeper, deeper in the eye, until it reached the other side, and this time it didn't hurt. Rather, the pain vanished altogether. Then Gray's entire hand followed, as he seemed to inscribe with a flourish something in a space that wasn't quite space, twisting something that wasn't quite time, pulling a thread of magic through other runes in shoulders and chest with a precision that was increasingly frightening.

“You know what I think?” Gray spoke. “I think you're just a dream. A shard of trauma that forced a soul to grow around it. You're part of something greater because of the human – of Alden's very human need to look for reason.” When he pulled back, he also flicked away the magic contraption fixing the eye open. “So I trust.”

He looked in Alden's eyes, and said:

“One day you'll step on kinder ground.”

...Knowing that that very reminder could kill them, for people like him and the dreamer would not accept being vulnerable.

But one could only act from reflex in a dream, and Gray knew himself as The Betrayer.

“Alden, perhaps you're the better person here...to see the truth.”

As energy flowed between runes, they shaped another between them. Too complex, too frail to exist in reality as he'd made it. But here, it had power. He had only seen it in one place, on a stone tablet.

The Truth.

The scenery shifted. Walls fell away like paper creations, stone and wood and soul burnt away in the span of a breath, leaving behind the hollow landscape of an immense field of white bone. Gray took a step forward, and his step felt odd. The ringmaster's voice reverberated uniquely off the surface. Between his fingers, the man could still feel the imprint of a needle. He threw his gaze in the distance, to what appeared to be spectator stalls, and despite the fact that he could glimpse individual entities, they seemed at once impossibly distant and incomprehensibly infinite, as if he were a bug gazing upon the dots on the sky. Had he won? Had he lost? Was it even Alden's dream in the first place, or simply a twist of his own psyche?

The crowd's laugher ran through him, tap-tap-tap.

The motifs were there. Suffering, ritual, indulgence. Gray spun on his heels, guarding his back as all around him, mirrors rose up from the ground. If he told Alden what he'd dreamed of, he would be revealed for the madman that he was. (Worse: He's be revealed as stupid). Yet Gray knew very well that pain could be used as fuel. If this was real, or a dream...

He supposed there would be no difference if he won. Not unless his mind created this nightmarish world where before there had been none.

In dreams he did not know his limits.

The ringmaster Jack spoke, Jack of the Bones that had replaced Pride, and as he introduced Gray and his 'opponent', something odd seemed to happen. At first it seemed perhaps a trick of the light, brought about by the mirrors that still grew, slower, around Gray. But soon the effect would be unmistakable.

Gray's hair was lighting up with glitter.

When he breathed in, he smelled the pine resin used to keep in place the bits of crushed mica. Now they were popping up on details of his clothes, too. His ponytail lifted up without him touching it, revealing the gear-shaped brand on the back of his head, before a silver glittery scarf covered it.

When Jack put his arm around him, Gray seemed to lose a foot in height without even noticing, and stepped to the side as if in a dance before his younger self grew back up. On his face he had a mask, not flat like Pride's but a skintight silvery thing around the eyes that made him look mischievous.

“I am concerned that I may damage something precious. After all, out of the two of us, only you know the rules.”

He spun in place, arms open wide. A glow pulsed beneath his tunic. How could he ever explain that in this dark land likely dredged from the depths of his imagination, he felt at home? Understood. Possibly appreciated. He spread his arms as far as they would go, as if to encompass all the audience, and an impossibly bright, needle-like light slipped past his collar and up, up into the sky. Mirrors reflected it ten, a hundred times over. Embarrassedly, he folded his cloak back over.

“There is one problem.” Gray admitted. He tried to step to the side, but by then the path had become mirror. “I LOVE the Circus.”

“A pity.” The boy said. “For if there are no rules, then I shall have to make my own.”

His eyes flickered in a frown, as they briefly regarded the place the ringmaster used to be, before turning to face the Mirror Maestro. The opponent was growing more familiar by the second, plays of light and pseudopods of molten silver flowing into strands of white hair and cool blue eyes on a young face. Too young, part of him regarded. The executioner sword on his back seemed almost larger than his malnourished figure. It seemed impossible that the stick-like arms could carry it.

The cold voice was just as familiar.

“It was never about that.” Young Gray spoke. Back then, he trusted himself too easily. “Naoki is competent, and I admire competence.” He continued, while striding around the place of mirrors, maintaining distance with his double. To anyone who knew whom Gray had been working for, it may have been ironic. Technically, the truth. Technical truth. “I however could not worm my way closer without a certain problem being...out of the way.” The boy pondered. He pointed up. Past the edge of his palm, he whispered loudly. “Do you think he would mind me killing his protege?”

Gray could not lie. Implications were not lies. But would the Maestro be bound by the same rules?

“You are likely mistaken.” Estimations were not lies. The boy tapped his chest. “This is who I am.”

Beliefs are not lies.

“Mirror. Silver.” Muttering, he brushed one of the reflective walls with his gloved fingertips. How to get out? He was tired, he wanted to go and find the trapeze. There was a word on the tip of his brain.

“Foil.”

Contrast, fabric. Reflection. 'Paperthin,' his thoughts warned. Then the other attacked, and all the reflexes from his training came back to Gray-the-trapeze-artist as he rolled to the side. There was a dull sound, as the sword struck a mirror wall.

The boy stood up, with a line burning across his ribs. He supposed that old life would never really left him go. In his hands he held long, needle-thin daggers.

He swirled and struck, before retreating at a safer distance. His own weapons seemed flimsy, unable to bear a single hit from the executioner sword without breaking. Unlike the sword on his back and its copy, they were not enchanted. But they were his preferred weapons, not the weapon he was bound to. And so Gray aged a little bit more.

“Have you ran away with the circus too?” Teenager Gray asked. He tried to circle his opponent, a seemingly casual walk that at times broke closer, teasing the danger-zone with feints, and at times broke into dance. “Or were you taken captive by its charm?”

His words matched the pattern of his steps with eerily perfection. He had always. Liked order. Rules. Law. His voice was captivating, not the flat, toneless monotone that was his nature, but the charm he had learned. At times, his voice seemed so vivid that Gray's presence, grey-cloaked and armed, seemed to simply disappear.

“It must be such rewarding work. Getting to break people down to their cores. See their truth.” He spoke from the side.

His voice seemed to come from ahead, but he was at once everywhere and nowhere, reflected in the mirrors yet with the mind unable to quite focus on him.

“Of course, I can save you the trouble and just spill out my truth.” Gray spoke, with the grin of someone who would break down a sand castle just before another could.

Suddenly he was too close, with a pommel aiming hard for the sword arm, and a dagger tip for tickling the kidneys.

“I am you.”