A Dreamer's Tale Chapter 9

‘Combat Basics’ was the first class she had in the morning, and it was located deep within the mountain. Not as far down as the Great Tree, as she found out when an older Initiate helped turn her around, but about as close as most things were.

The room it was in had more than just the initiates from her trial group in it (and not even all of them, some others having enough combat training to not need that introductory class). The floor seemed to have some padding to it, and there were weapons racks with practice staves off to the side. To Elizabeth’s surprise, it was Adept Wengar that taught the class. 

“We may be monks looking for peace and enlightenment, but as our name implies, we are also Warriors, and thus you all need to be prepared in the skills to defend yourselves and others. Here you will learn these skills, at least in their most basic forms. Other Adepts and Masters can teach you higher skills. To begin, we’ll start with some warm-ups.” 

The running around the room and exercises felt almost as grueling as the hike up the mountain the day before had been, but far quicker. Then they partnered up to practice some moves that Wengar showed them, Elizabeth pairing up with an older boy, late teens or early twenties with short blonde hair and a crooked nose. 

“I’m Elizabeth, nice to meet you.” 

“... Victor.” They practiced a few basic punches and kicks in a kata, then moved on to a throw demonstration. Elizabeth wasn’t bad, but the older boy pointed out several flaws in her technique and how to adjust them. 

“Thanks. You really know a lot about this, huh?” That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because while he had been quiet before, he outright glared at her afterward, and when demonstrating his throws, tossed her about perhaps a tad too roughly (nothing that left her anything more than a bit sore and easily Fixed up, but pain was still annoying). 

After class she had breakfast in the dining hall, and Elizabeth wondered what it would be like to help them out, something her schedule had her tasked to do before dinner. The food wasn’t anywhere near as great as it had been for the feast, but it was plentiful and filling, which was helpful after the workout combat class had given her. 

From there she found her way over to her first advanced class, ‘Adept Healing.’. It was in one of the larger entrances, outside, above, and to the south of the big one, which was essentially how Elizabeth found her way to it, taking longer and getting her uniform dirtier than she would have liked in the process but not getting lost at least as she made her way up to that level. 

Most of the other students (all Adepts) were there by the time she got there, awkwardly hanging around to the side, unsure of saying anything. A few more came out from the mountain, followed by Master Poro. Everyone else automatically stood in a circle as the Master arrived, taking his place in it, and Elizabeth hurried to do the same, the girl on her left looking familiar, but she wasn’t sure why. “Good morning, Dream Warriors. We have a new student in our class today, Elizabeth Wry.” He gestured over to her, and she waved back at him and everyone nervously. 

“Now, today’s discussion topic will be the bounds of Fixing, to show what is and is not possible. Now, does anyone want to state the hard rule on Fix?” 

One of the adepts, an older man, volunteered. “Fix cannot be used to heal that which is dead.” 

“Very good. Some say that plants and other matter can have a life of their own, and they can indeed ‘die,’ but they can be resurrected by our powers; animals and humans cannot. Only the Grandmaster himself can do such a thing, and only if they haven’t been dead for too long, so their soul has not escaped their bodies.” 

“Wait, why can only the Grandmaster manage it? If it’s one of the base five abilities, then shouldn’t anyone be able to do it with enough work?” Elizabeth interrupted before covering her mouth. 

Poro laughed. “Ha ha, no need to worry about that girl; this class is meant for everyone to participate and learn from each other. For most uses of our five powers, that is correct; however, Grandmaster Tenga, well, he can break the rules as easily as he can set them, ha! Everyone has the ability to use Life Energy; for most, it’s just so negligible that even with decades of training, you’d barely see any results. You initiates are those with the potential to do a fair bit, but even among your peers, you’ll find ‘levels’ of how strong any one person is. Some will learn less quickly, get stronger slower, and reach a ‘cap’ where improvement slows down sooner, things like that. Grandmaster Tenga is so far beyond the rest of us that he can simply do some things the rest of us could never dream of, if you’ll pardon my pun.” The rest of the class groaned a bit, but it was good-natured; she felt respect from most of them toward him. Something about his explanation seemed off to Elizabeth, but she couldn’t pinpoint where, so she didn’t bring it up.

“We only discuss what is possible for those within normal ranges of power here. Though, I suppose with some decades of focus, someone like Master Florian might manage similar feats, given her own prodigious strength.” Everyone turned to look at her, suddenly judging and evaluating her in a different light, while the Master shook his head at those thoughts. “Oh, look at me getting distracted. A very interesting topic to be sure, but we’re here to look into Fix. And so we shall!” 

He slung his pack off his shoulder and opened it to reveal chopped pieces of wood. Stepping into the center of the circle, he placed one on the ground and began focusing. The wood shifted, growing wider and taller, but also rooting itself in the ground, bumping up the earth around it slightly as it grew. It took a few minutes to grow to its full height, about twice as tall as Elizabeth was, with many branches and bright green leaves sticking out from it.

Poro huffed and puffed a bit. tired from that display before handing the bag over to an Adept in the circle. “Pass these around and pair up. The assignment for today is to work together and try to get the piece of wood to ‘grow’ into the ground. With great effort, you too can even manage something like this. For now though, just work on getting the roots to sprout in the ground.” 

Elizabeth partnered up with the girl beside her, the only one who looked close to her age (most others were at least a decade older than her while she was only a couple of years older). “Hi, I’m Victoria,” she said, offering a hand to shake. 

“I’m Elizabeth, though I guess you already knew that.” The piece clicked together in her mind, and she asked, “Do you know an Initiate called Victor?” 

Smiling, she said, “Yes. He’s my twin brother, actually. When did you meet him?” 

“Just before now, in a combat class. He seems a lot less... smiley than you.” 

She kept up the smile, but it felt like a grimace for a moment. “He’s been going through some stuff recently. Could I ask you a favor? Keep an eye out for him, ok?” 

“I’ll... try.” She could do that much at least, right? Just whenever she saw him. Despite being grumpy for an unknown reason, he seemed decent enough and willing to help instruct her in the... Basic combat class. While his twin sister was an Adept already. It was just speculation, but from how he reacted immediately after her comment, it might make sense if he was a bit jealous of her and/or upset with his own progress.

Suddenly, she was doubting her ability to reach out to him, given those feelings and the advanced courses she was already taking, but Victoria, oblivious to her doubts, said, “Thank you so much! We haven’t been able to connect as much, but I’m glad you can help. Now let’s get started on our project.” 

They got to work on Fixing the tree to grow it back but came into a problem pretty early on, the attempt at bringing the tree back failing. “Why aren’t you synchronizing your life energy with mine?” Victoria asked her. 

“Synchronizing? I’ve... never done that before.” 

“Ah, right. Well, just try to feel my energy out and sort of ‘match’ it, ok?” Elizabeth wasn’t really sure, but she tried her best and actually managed to find it a bit. It was like sensing someone’s feelings, though both less and more clear. Her intent mingled with something else- the life energy! 

She tried to copy that, matching her own energy to Victoria’s. It was hard to explain, but it felt like it moved in coils, spiraling around and into the wood, not that she could exactly see it as such. Matching that pattern wasn’t difficult, though it took a fair bit of focus to maintain it.

“Whoa.” Victoria’s voice brought her out of her focus and caused her to open her eyes, seeing a stump firmly rooted in the ground.

“Wow, that’s way more than I managed before. How did you manage to put in so much energy into it?” Victoria had supplied the majority of it to fixing up the tree, but she felt she had helped a bit. At least a third of the energy that had been put into the project. 

“You did a fair bit too, and without even robes...” Elizabeth looked at her oddly and grabbed at her own robes. They admittedly didn’t fit great but were otherwise just like any other Initiate’s robes. “Ah, never mind, forget I said anything. How are you feeling?” 

Now that she thought about it “Really tired. That took a lot out of me, even working with you. I don’t know how anyone could manage to grow a full tree like that.” 

She just smiled. “You’re doing better than I did when I was just starting out. I’m sure you’ll improve in time. Just, uh, be careful about showing off too much.” Was she talking about her brother? Given what Elizabeth suspected his feelings on the matter were, it made sense (though she couldn’t help the feeling that she was missing out on more than that). 

After learning to heal came learning to break (or remain unbroken, Elizabeth supposed) with ‘Applications of Force.’. About half her class was there, including Derrick, Tenga, and Quentin. Unfortunately, it also had Initiate Fergus Guiltjoy, who it seemed hadn’t forgotten about a need to mess with her. 

The Adept teaching them was a very elderly man, whose first test for them was to break through thin bricks placed on little planks they had set up in front of them. Without much instruction on how to do so. Usually Elizabeth got by on instinct, but when it came to Force, she found it hard to call upon- visions of her head crashing against a wall flashed through her mind- which made it hard for her to match her classmates. Not that all of them seemed to get by in the normal way. 

Derrick, to the best of her knowledge, seemed to be breaking things through just the ‘force’ of smashing his own large hands hard against the bricks. It worked; he was strong enough to just bash through it for the moment, but Elizabeth wondered if he’d be able to hold up as the class advanced.

Then again, there were plenty that weren’t even managing that, despite probably using a tiny bit more of their powers than Derrick, so maybe it wasn’t so unusual. Like, herself, for instance. 

Adept Belemere stepped up in front of her, looking down at the girl and prompting her to strike with a nod of his head. She focused, raised her hand, and brought it crashing down- PAIN. Tons of pain lanced through her as her hand bounced off it, not even leaving a crack in the brick. The Adept shook his head disappointedly.

Why? She thought that she had at least managed to call upon a bit of Force- a flicker of motion caught the corner of her eye, and she saw Guiltjoy pulling his hand back. He must have used Folding to touch the base of her brick, then used Force to reinforce it! That’s why there had been such feedback and shock to her.

“Adept Belemere, Initiate Guiltjoy was messing with me! He used Force to counter what I was doing, didn’t you see it?” He furrowed his bushy eyebrows (they were ridiculous; Elizabeth was kind of amazed he could see anything at all past them) and looked over at the other initiate. Guiltjoy was doing his best impression of someone innocent, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth- until the Adept walked past them, and the boy teased and silently mocked Elizabeth.

After class, she went up to him and asked, “What are you doing? I’ve never done anything to you, so why are you treating me this way?” 

He shrugged and said, “It was just a joke; don’t take it so seriously,” then tried to push past her, but this time Elizabeth used Force when he wasn’t suspecting it, knocking him backwards.

“No, that’s not it. I’ve seen jokes before, and maybe the most mean-spirited of them could have qualified for yours, but you tried to have me disqualified before the Trials even started. Why did you hate me before we’d even spoken?” 

He sneered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stupid peasant girl,” he said to his two fellow initiates, each of them a bit older than her. He walked past her, using a quick bit of Folding to avoid hitting her again or her trying to step in the way again, though she didn't try to obstruct him further.

The rest of her classes were fairly straightforward, though the others were hardly as exciting. Some basic writing courses and other academics. Her schedule must have been thrown off from the others a fair bit because of her advanced classes because she didn’t have a ton of overlap with most of the others from her Trial group. The history was slightly more interesting at least, with a focus on Dream Warriors and their influence on the world, not just the more generalized courses she’d taken before.

“History before the changing of the Zeitgeist, the Dawn of the Dream Warriors, is mostly unknown. Despite our founder doing his best, such dark times did not lend themselves well to the recording and tracking of history. The Age of Bloodshed was one marked by several warlords and territories, constantly shifting around. Our age of Enlightenment is one of unity, under a single, peaceful government, the royal family.” 

The Adept went on to talk a bit about how the Hevlon line had first aided the nascent order back when the Dream Warriors were still fighting tooth and nail against the Blade Bonded that ruled the land. It was very interesting to Elizabeth, all of it, but some things seemed off slightly from what little she had heard before. Like how much she seemed to ‘skim’ over the civil wars and unrest settling the kingdom in the centuries afterwards, even if now, in the present day, yes, things were pretty peaceful. Elizabeth held her tongue, however, reasoning that they might cover such things later on. 

When the adept mentioned the Dream Warriors infiltrating on the inside and feeding information back to the group, Elizabeth’s curiosity (and Dawn’s words ringing in her head) forced her to ask, “Why did the Blade Bonded work with the Dream Warriors so unsuspiciously, even partway into the War of Change?” 

“Ah, records have the Dream Warriors as sometimes having worked with the Blade Bonded as advisors before Tenga’s revolution. Back then they were called ‘Dream Walkers’ and seen as very weak, looked down upon compared to the more numerous Blade Demons. They did their best to guide the Blade Bonded away from destructive paths, but in time, it became clear that all of them were cursed.” 

“The Blade Bonded are so few and rarely heard of nowadays, teac- Adept Marva,” Elizabeth quickly corrected herself. “Why were they so plentiful in the past?” 

The Adept smiled broadly at that, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Just full of questions, aren’t you, young Initiate? That’s a good thing, but please be a dear and try not to disrupt the flow of the class, will you?” Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at being talked down to but bit her tongue. “Anyways, that is thanks to the efforts of the Dream Warriors and them taking down the vast majority of the Blade Demons, sealing away all of the blades in the Great Vault.” Her ears perked up at that; she’d overheard some other monks talking about a vault like that within the mountain, guarded by the Grandmaster himself. 

“Anyways, back to the topic. With only a hundred or so warlords left...” The lecture continued like that. It wasn’t bad truly, just that Elizabeth would have hoped for a bit more open discourse at a major Dream Warrior temple.

Eventually it rolled around to dinnertime, and Elizabeth had a shift helping the kitchen staff. 

“Reporting for duty, ma’am.” Elizabeth said brightly to the head chef, who just grunted and directed her to one of the others. She went to the woman she was pointing to and asked, “Uh, how can I hel-” 

Not turning away from the vegetables she was chopping, the Sleeper said, “Be useful with those powers and run down to the base of the mountain. We have some new deliveries that should be arriving any moment now and a larder that needs filling.” She barely waited a second to say, “Well? Hop to it!” Brandishing her knife in Elizabeth’s direction (or maybe just pointing at her and had forgotten she was holding it in her hand when she pointed at Elizabeth), the young Dream Warrior got the message and quickly rushed off down the mountain.

Thankfully, there was a very clearly marked ‘service path’ for the Sleepers to use to get food up the mountain, which was very easy to travel through. It was still a decently long jog down to the bottom, though, even trying to use a bit of folding to go faster.

She hadn’t realized there was an entrance at the very base of the mountain before, but it was pretty hidden away. There was a pathway from it to the village of sleepers, but she could see the caravan filled with food far closer. She also heard a familiar voice telling some of the other Sleepers about the food delivery. 

“Ali?” The handsome boy popped his head around the corner of the caravan, looking shocked at Elizabeth. 

“Wha- Elizabeth?! What are you doing here?” 

“Well, uh, I’m a Dream Warrior. That’s why I was stopping by the capital on my way to come here. You look a bit different.” His outfit was a far more stately affair than when they met in the lowest ring of the Capital, with a fancy collared shirt and his hair slicked back. He did still have his whip, though, coiled up at his side. 

“You too,” he said, gesturing at her robes. “Wow, it’s only been a couple of days, but you passed the Five Trials and became a Dream Warrior; that’s incredible. I guess you didn’t really need that much ‘saving’ now, did you?” 

“No, I totally did. I’m still trying to get a handle on everything, and honestly, I kind of suck at fighting.” She rubbed her arms and shoulders a bit where she remembered getting sore in the combat class, and he laughed, though she could tell it was good-naturedly, likely in reminiscence of his own training. 

“It’s always a pain to start, but I find it can be quite rewarding.” 

“Especially when you can put it to work beating up bad guys?” 

“Exactly! That or smug pretend-to-be-nice-but-are-really-actually-jerks noble sons like Deman.”

“Oh? And you aren’t one of those?” She asked, returning his previous hand wave at his own clothes. 

“Ah, right. I hope I’m not a jerk, at least, I try not to be. I am a noble, though; sorry for hiding that. I just... didn’t want you to think differently of me. I wanted you to just see me for me.” 

“I get it, I think that’s why I did the same.” They smiled at each other for a moment before another voice interrupted them. 

“While it’s so touching for you to catch up, don’t you have some produce to move up the mountain, oh honored Dream Warrior?” The young Sleeper man that had been going over the invoice asked snarkily. What was his problem? She pushed it out of her head for the moment and turned back to the nobleman. 

“Looks like I have to take this back up.” She took a hefty crate of apples into her arms as she spoke. “I guess I’ll have to talk to you later.” 

“Why don’t I come up with you? Many hands make light work.” Ali tried to grab a couple of boxes himself, but the Sleeper stepped in front of him. 

“By rule of Tenga, only those purified and holy can set foot on this mountain; those with the inner spark of greatness, or those pure of mind and verified by the Dream Warriors themselves. You, boy, fit neither of those categories.” 

“What- that rule must have been made centuries ago. Why do you even care when I’m just trying to make things go faster?” 

Elizabeth chimed in. “Yeah, it’s not like there’s even anything special up this path anyways; we’re just taking it to the kitchen stores.” 

He grimaced at her but didn’t move away. Ali sighed and laid the boxes down dramatically. “Then I guess I’ll just have to wait here watching over the food my father has so generously offered you.” 

She goes up and down a few times, delivering the food to it’s stores, catching a bit of conversation with Ali during the bits when the rude Sleeper isn’t around. 

“So, your father donates all this food to the temples?” 

“Not exactly. My father, Duke Helios, is a very rich man, but even he can’t supply all the food to the temple. He does, however, make a very reasonable deal with the Royal family, and through them sells the food to the temples. We have a lot of farming estates, and my father has always strongly believed in supporting the Dream Warriors. I didn’t always get it, but I guess I never met a Dream Warrior so enchanting before.” 

She blushed heavily at that comment, spluttering a bit, before taking up her next box of food. She didn’t have much energy to get more flustered after that, and though he seemed to enjoy seeing her like that, he didn’t push things any further, just talking about light things, trading a couple of jokes, and talking a bit more about what they did (which for her was starting to be learning everything and for him seemed to be trying to meet his father’s exacting expectations while moonlighting as a vigilante in a way that [while likely helpful to many people like herself], she was pretty sure would have been illegal for most people not the son of a duke).

As she was grabbing the last of the food (which wasn’t as much as she had worried about, much of the food going down to be stored at the village too), he said, “Hey, take care of yourself in there. You’re a good girl, but I’ve heard some rumors that these places can kinda chew someone up.” 

That... was worrying. But she nodded and promised, “I’ll be fine. I’ll take breaks and make sure not to overwork myself or anything.” He opened his mouth, but the annoying man showed up again to drive him off, and she was back up the mountain. The Sleeper complained about her slacking off chatting, but she hadn’t spent that long, right?” 

Wrong, or at least so she was informed by the kitchen staff when she got back (either that or it was just the slowness of her pace). She was berated for being ‘enormously late, threatening the health and appetites of every Dream Warrior here, yada, yada.’.

Dinner had already been served, but she was given a quick break to eat up, then help them clean up the kitchen, which proved to be a far larger task than cleaning up back home ever had been. Still, she persevered, trying to put as much effort as she could to prove she wasn’t slacking off. It worked pretty well until she nearly dropped a wet plate in her rush, catching it with a lucky instinctual use of Folding that delivered it back to her hands. 

After that long day was done, she went to her room and collapsed into bed, eager to sink into sleep. As she drifted off, she felt rest, peace... and a tugging sense, pulling her from the open dream space back to her next class. It looked like this day really didn’t end.