Chapter 22: Part 22

Warden heard a deep rumbling as Daniel’s other construct awoke to drag Daniel into unconsciousness. It was time to get to work. He went back to the corner of his little cell that he had decided to work on. He wasn’t sure what part of Daniel’s subconscious it represented. Daniel probably wouldn’t be able to say. Warden was down at the foundational level. Doing what he was doing had to be a slow process.

He had discovered yesterday after being put here that it was easier to gently reshape this one little patch of mind while Daniel was sleeping. Since it was foundational, it always snapped back. While Daniel was awake, the snap back was almost flawless, which was good news for Daniel’s mental health and bad news for Warden and probably for Daniel’s life expectancy. On the other hand, while Daniel was asleep, the snap back was more gentle, and impressions wore in over time. It probably helped that Daniel’s dreaming mind would be too busy avoiding or confronting the nightmarish blob that represented his need to sleep now.

Warden pushed with his willpower, lowering the corner of his cell until he could just reach his hand out and feel the other side. More foundation. The illusion that made up his cell was thick, too. He’d have to make a pretty long trench to squeeze out of here. Slowly, like honey dripping into a cup, the foundation began to snap back. Warden pulled his arm free and waited until it had stabilized.

Two nights, he had been working on this. He needed longer, but he knew he wouldn’t get it. The very fact that he was still in here and Daniel was still alive meant that they were living on borrowed time anyway. The imposter had never said as much, but Warden knew the shape of the lies the crude facsimile had planted throughout Daniel’s mind. Carver wanted this delivery finished. After that, Daniel’s usefulness was limited to Daniel’s desire to toe the line.

Daniel wouldn’t, of course. He was normally pretty comfortable with authority figures, but in this case, Warden knew in Daniel’s core he couldn’t just accept the new system as it slowly reflected its way back onto the humans of realis. For one thing Daniel wouldn’t be able to live up to Opulence enough to have any place in the new subservient communities other than the…well, the subservient half. But more than that, Daniel didn’t actually believe that extravagant wealth did or should drive society.

Warden pushed on the foundation again. It receded, displacing some of the foundational truths of Daniel’s mind. Warden was being careful; those truths would never be lost or damaged, but he was still clenched with anxiety of accidentally giving Daniel the irrealis equivalent of brain trauma. This time, he was able to reach under it for longer, groping around with his hand. The prison had been built in some sort of pit, of course. Warden couldn’t tell from his limited senses whether that pit was natural or if the interloper had blasted a piece of Daniel’s mind away just to hide Daniel’s guardian. He really hoped it was the former, though.

The receding happened again. The gap was now slightly wider than one of Warden’s fingers. Not nearly enough, even if he reduced his form. He was about to push again when he heard the rattle of claws on dirt. He could see through the top off his prison, if only with difficulty, and he looked up to see the sleep creature walking along in a steady rhythm. Originally, the thing had lacked a face. As far as Warden had been able to tell, it had lacked a front. But as he saw its outline, distorted through the thick pane of illusion that trapped him, he also saw what seemed to be a giant eye, gleaming with a brassy light.

Warden slumped down against the wall, feeling a wave of relief wash over his senses, until the prison was nearly filled with comfort. His deputization had stuck. Daniel wasn’t alone out there.

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Ordinarily, I don’t remember my dreams. That night, though, I think I went to the mindscape as I slept. I never intended to do so. In fact, I wasn’t fully aware I could do so. But sometime between the black embrace of the nightmarish claws and the ringing of the morning alarm, I found myself once again standing on a street next to a bunch of featureless houses. And--I was pleased to see--one house, fully featured on the outside but lacking interior details. At least my shapings had stuck. I turned to look toward the city. There, in the distance, the sleep creature was barely visible, swollen to two or three times the size of a house. It hadn’t been that big when manifested, it must be able to change its size within my mind.

I watched its rampage in silence for a few moments, and nearly startled myself awake when it turned towards me. The creature had originally been omnidirectional. Something had happened to it, though. Something had given it a single massive eye like a searchlight. A yellowish tinge shadowed the light. As I watched, the searchlight eye pulsed regularly, and each pulse let off rays of light, transforming it briefly into a five-pointed star. Each time that happened, the creature would rush forward and crush something between its many, many limbs tipped with vicious grasping claws.

I was certain I had seen that star before. Some part of me was screaming for attention from somewhere in the city. The beast ignored it. I ignored it too, because approaching would mean moving closer to the beast, which I most definitely did not want to do. Hopefully whatever part of my mind that was would still have the information tomorrow when I could come here in force.

I turned my attention to my house, splitting off one of my eyes to keep watch on the beast in case it decided the town needed as much of a makeover as the crest-shaped city. As long as I was here, and as long as my body was asleep--I checked, using my newly acquired dual awareness. Wait, was physical me dreaming? How was that even possible. Surely, dreams would be a part of the mindscape. How could I be experiencing this and dreaming at the same time? For that matter, why didn’t my dreams cause drastic shifts in this part of my mind? If I had been awake, I would have written down those questions to ask someone once I found an expert. Since I wasn’t, I did my best to remember.

I entered my workshop. Next, I would need a…I decided on a forge. I was making tools of mental warfare; a forge seemed most appropriate.

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For the second time in a scant few hours of real time, Warden felt Daniel manifesting in the mindscape. Remarkable. Warden didn’t know much about thought construction, but based on snippets he had spied away from the interloper and his employer, Warden had gathered that manifesting was difficult, and most masters didn’t even both teaching their apprentices how to do so until the very last lesson. It was, in fact, the whole reason the interloper had felt safe here, occupying Daniel’s mind. Daniel wouldn’t be able to tell the difference without direct examination, the employer had explained.

Well, whether Daniel was exceptional or the employer was wrong, Daniel was here again. Warden’s senses were limited, though at least no longer cut off entirely owing to the small but slowly widening hole under the wall of his cell. Daniel was quite distant, though. Further, even, than the deputized sleep monster. Like all constructors, Daniel could of course travel with ease any distance through the dream, but Warden’s chances of contacting him until he moved were basically nil. For that matter, the trickle of awareness he could access would not be loud enough to alert Daniel unless Daniel was being extra alert.

It was a shame, too. Daniel had walked over the top of Warden’s cell not three hours ago, unknowing that his ally lay just beneath his feet.

Warden gathered his will for another push against the foundation.

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The forge was nearly complete. I had drawn each of the pieces out of the stuff of the house-turned-workshop. It was immaculate, because it was new. A rack of precise tools, the design borrowed from a video game, hung on the wall. They weren’t usable, at least not in their current state, but they gave a sense of purpose to the room. One side of the room was entirely occupied by the furnace, which ran endlessly without a heat source. No sense in adhering to physics when you’re making a furnace out of gray nothing using one of your own feet as a catalyst.

But my favorite part was the center of the room. There I had created a massive anvil, easily as long as I was tall. At the floor, a series of channels ran away from the furnace, which would allow liquid metal--or, I supposed, more accurately liquid thought--to flow to the moulds in the center. I had made the mould casings interchangeable, to the extent that I could. The problem was that I had not yet mastsered the art of creating. Everything I had done so far had used available materials.

I considered my options. The eye I had left outside was still watching the rampaging spotlight that was my sense of sleep. It had not left the city, though it seemed to be working its way towards something near the center. In any event it was too far away to be a threat to me.  I had time. A whole night’s sleep worth of time, in fact.

I walked to the furnace and opened the hopper. After a moment of hesitation, I reached into my own chest and grasped my…well I guess it would be my heart. My sense of self. It wasn’t a bloody mess like doing this for real would be, even on the irrealis, I was certain. Instead I drew forth nothing more than a cantaloupe-sized mass of red-purple material. It seemed to be the same core stuff as the gray house stuff. I could use that. I knew how it worked.

I dropped the lump until the hopper. A moment later, the channels began to fill, one filling with red liquid and the other with blue. Huh. I pulled some levers, which I had crafted mad-scientist sized because I could, to direct the liquids to the first mould in the floor. It was nothing special, just the shape of a plain, flat-fronted hammer.

After all, what use is an anvil without one?

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