Park Chung-Ho woke up at the sound of his Mobile phone at 10 A.M. That was the alarm he had set up before sleeping. He needed this little bit of rest, but he was still drowsy when he opened his eyes. He felt a weight on his chest. The cat was staring back at him as if to say :
"Did you sleep well ?"
"Thank you," Park Chung-Ho said. "You help me sleep, you know."
The cat jumped to the floor and stretched himself.
Park Chung-Ho walked out of the room and saw a dancing light at the end of the corridor. The fireplace was lit. He entered the warm room where, apparently, Diane was waiting for him.
"Good morning," she said. "Did you manage to get some rest? I saw Nótt [1]came to you."
"Oh, that's the name of the cat..." he realised that this was the same as in Diane and Aislinn's last name. "Wait, you named the cat by your own name ?"
"No, we just have a few cats, and they all have names related to the night or dreams."
"Anyway, it was of great help for sleeping".
"They are protective and work pretty well against nightmares," she pointed to the table. "Check that, there are a few things to eat."
There was a lot of food on the table, and Chung-Ho heard his stomach agreeing to the idea of eating. But he noticed that there were only the two of them in this room.
"Did Aislinn wake up?"
Diane shook her head.
"Not yet. We'll have to be patient. We're gathering intel on where she currently is inside the Dream Realm." She pointed to the door at the side of the fireplace. There may be another room there.
"Can I be of some help?"
"For now, you need to eat. I'll explain a few things while you take some energy, then I'll have to go for the rest of the day, but I'll be back for dinner. I'll introduce you to the others before I go."
Diane waited for Park Chung-Ho to pour some tea into a cup before she spoke again.
"Over the years, decades, centuries, people have studied dreams and their significations. People have feared nightmares and tried and protect from them. DreamCatchers, Svefnthorn, Bès statues, Cats, there are a lot of protections that were found in different cultures. There are more, of course, but those are the ones you already saw, and they seem to be the most efficient ones too." She took a pause.
Park Chung-Ho was eating and drinking tea. He was fully concentrated on what Diane was telling him. The explanations about what happened to him last night were slowly coming to him now.
"There are also a lot of stories that speak about Dreams. Dreams that changed a life. People who were able to travel in the Dream Realm and who benefited from it."
Chung-Ho had not finished his cup of tea; he was still holding it, with both hands, close to his open mouth. But his thirst for answers was bigger than his real one.
"So, you're telling me that those people became famous because of what they did in their dreams?"
"Not totally. I mean that they were awakened to the Dream Realm and that they managed to get something out of it. I only use their examples because they are famous and have to be taken seriously to understand that dreams have an impact."
"What do you mean by having an impact?"
She pointed her finger at one of his scars.
"You should already know that there can be consequences in a dream, right?"
"Well... That nightmare told me that it was something related to my brain. What was the name of that thing by the way?"
Diane looked at the fire. Her stare became sharper.
"Albormare." She split the name syllable by syllable, with what seemed like hatred in her voice.
Park Chung-Ho decided not to ask anything else about this dark figure that haunted his nightmares.
"Some beings really have names that embody their true self," he said.
Diane stood silent for a bit. She took a slice of bread and bit it. She took a deep breath as if she was breathing out the bad feelings that name was inspiring her.
"Let's get back to what I was saying. Consequences... You saw the scars, you felt the pain. Those are possible impacts from a nightmare. A dream can have an interaction with your mind and with your body. That is, if you're really inside the Dream Realm."
"What do you mean by being really inside the Dream Realm?"
"I told you that people can be sensitive or not to the Dream Realm, but being sensitive to it means you really enter it. Most of the people will just spectate the Dream Realm. They can only see a part of it, where they project their thoughts and feelings. They will think it's real, but it's more like if they were behind a window. The more people delve into the Dream Realm, the more their bodies can be affected by the Dream Realm."
"Do we know what makes us able to enter the Dream Realm or not?"
"I'm not sure that this question has a proper answer. I personally do not have any knowledge of the subject. I just know I can travel there."
"Can someone sensitive stay spectator, or are we forced to enter the Dream Realm?"
"That's a very good question. You have to know that the Dream Realm isn't monolithic. It's more like a lot of lands that are amalgamated and interconnected. In those lands, there are différent rules. One may be sensitive to the Dream Realm and travel always in the same land. But I never heard of someone sensitive not entering the Dream Realm when sleeping.
"I don't remember entering it when I slept here yesterday."
"You did enter it, but the protection we placed in the room made you stay out of trouble. I think you didn't encounter any nightmares."
Park Chung-Ho nodded; he knew that, over the protections he had, there was another reason he did not encounter any nightmares the last part of his night. They ended the breakfast, and Diane showed him a new room in this house. It was on the other side of the wall where the fireplace was. A huge library. There were 5 other people here. Chung-Ho recognised the tall man named Sasha.
"There are multiple books that will help you understand things better in here. This section is for beginners. It contains the basics. Sasha and a group of hunters are in a more advanced part, where a lot of dreams and nightmares have been described by people who experienced them. Let's meet them if you like."
She waved to the group and introduced them to the young man.
"This is Park Chung-Ho, he's a Friend of Aislinn, and he's the one she helped yesterday."
Diane turned to the young man.
"They all are hunters from our Society. We've called upon them to look for Aislinn. I let you meet each other. I got to go."
The first to step forward was a young woman; she was short but seemed very strong.
"Hello, my name is Jeanne Dupont. I'm a French hunter, my twin brother Pierre is our cartographer."
Chung-Ho couldn't mistake the fact that they were twins. Their eyes were very much the same, and despite the fact that they had different genders, their facial features looked the same. He greeted them both. A second woman, who seemed around the age of Diane and Sasha, stood up.
"Ida Sigriddottir, huntress" she simply said
She was blonde and tall, like the guy sitting at her side. but not as tall as him.
"Olaf Sigurdson," said the man, who had a great beard. "I'm a Hammersmith. I can create things in the Dream Realm. But I'm also a hunter."
Sasha came to Chung-Ho too
"We're looking for informations for Aislinn.s rescue, if you need any help with anything, tell us, ok?"
"It's ok, I think I will have a lot of things to study. Thanks a lot."
Park Chung-Ho read all afternoon. There was a lot of information to find in the books Diane showed him. He learned that every sensitive wasn't really the same. The sensitivity could be stronger or weaker, the sensitive could be able to only travel through lands, or to really interact in the dreams with a more or less wide range of possible actions that had been seen.
There was a whole book dedicated to the hunt for nightmares. Some people were sensitive enough that they were able to fight nightmares. Regular dreamers could be haunted by nightmares and pay hunters to get rid of their problems. Park Chung-Ho was curious about this, as they seemed to have good items to protect from the nightmares. Were those items not efficient enough?
He would need to find a book about the protective items to understand why hunters were necessary.
One of the most interesting things was that sensitives could build a link and meet in the Dream Realm. Hunters could build a guild that way and hunt in groups for specific nightmares. The moment he found this in a book, he looked at the 5 other people in the library. Something was telling him that they were that kind of group and that they were preparing for a move.
He found some more information about the way the Dream Realm works. There seemed to be more than just lands in this realm. There seemed to be multiple layers of this Realm, and each layer seemed to be more difficult to explore than the one above. But those layers were also darker, and seemed to feed themselves; that is what was written, from the imagination of dreamers. There was a sentence that captivated Park Chung-Ho's attention: "Be careful about what you bring into the Dream Realm. Be even more careful with what you bring out."
This was the last sentence of this book, and he searched for another Book on the subject, but Diane was back, and everyone stopped their study to go to dinner.
Diane came to Chung-Ho.
"How was your day? Did you find anything that caught your attention?"
"I've discovered some things, but I have a question."
"I'm listening"
"We travel there. But if there is a way in, there is a way out. Isn't it possible for a dream to go out ?"
Diane looked shocked.
"Do you realise what you're saying?
"Well, I'm not asking about getting a dream out of its realm, but is it possible? Are there risks that this happens?"
Diane looked at him, straight in the eyes; she was dead serious.
"It happened in the past. It happens nowadays, too. This has to be avoided at all costs."
"I know how people can be greedy. I'm pretty sure someone already tried to become rich by using his dreams, am I right?"
"Money, talent, love... People have been begging in their dreams. Some made their dreams come true. But you can't bring something out if you don't leave something in return. These kinds of cases have brought the idea of Devil Pacts."
"I see." Park Chung-Ho recited the sentence that got his attention. "Be careful about what you bring into the Dream Realm. Be even more careful with what you bring out."
"Indeed," Diane answered. "There's always a price to pay."
[1] Nótt is the goddes of the Night in the Northern Mythology. Nóttdottir means Nótt's daughter.