[299] Master of Consciousness (3)
"Do not threaten our peace!"
The great axe descending toward the crown of her head moved too fast to follow with her eyes.
In that instant Amy realized this was the end of the line.
'Goodbye, Shirone….'
A bad ending.
Still, in a way it felt like an acceptable close. After all, this was Shirone's mindscape. To fall asleep in his arms forever.
"Kraaaaaa!"
A savage roar snapped Amy back to attention, and something black streaked across her vision.
By the time she came to, the Ignite had been hurled ten meters.
Amy felt a presence behind her and turned.
To see it properly she had to tilt her head all the way back.
An Egoist covered with thornlike spines. It stood over six meters tall, its stance awkwardly between quadrupedal and bipedal, glaring forward.
Egoists manifest in particular forms borrowed from an incarnation's desires. The process hadn't finished; all the Egoists in the square had been transformed into black smoke and drawn in. It hadn't grown taller, but the thorns along its torso had become unnaturally long.
"Kraaang!"
Egoist—Rage Form.
The colossal shadow beast roared and leapt over Amy.
When the object blocking her view vanished, Shirone's face, twisted with fury, came into sight.
'Shirone…?'
Shirone tended to favor reason over desire. But this Egoist radiated a level of power unlike anything they'd faced so far.
'Could he have come to save me?'
Aware of the hostility Shirone's incarnation harbored, Amy refused to jump to conclusions.
Still, she couldn't suppress the hopeful ache in her chest. It had always been like this. Whenever danger came, Shirone had always protected her.
The Rage-formed Egoist tore through hundreds of antitheses and still bristled with power. Even the Ignite's armored followers were sent flying by a single kick.
"Shirone! Do you intend to spend your life dreaming of some petty, despicable existence?!"
An Ignite staggered to his feet, spitting blood. He grabbed a massive axe and charged the monster, vaulting and swinging the axe behind him.
Like a drawn bow he straightened, then snapped his body like a spring, driving the axe down. The Egoist's skull split in two.
A smile flickered at the Ignite's lips, but the scream he'd expected never came. Through the haft he could still feel the Egoist's state: it was angry, seething, on the verge of exploding.
As the Ignite tried to steady himself, the rage-form's clawed hand smashed into his face.
Half his face gone, he plunged to the ground and was crushed beneath a leg thicker than a pillar.
Kuuuuung!
The earth trembled as the fight ended.
"Run! Get out of here!"
The antitheses scattered in panic. The Egoist howled and pursued them, hunting down every last one.
The square where Shirone's group stood was spotless—no corpses, nothing.
Amy, who had nearly died, collapsed to her knees. Shirone approached her.
She turned and, realizing he'd come, her heart pounded. Had his anger eased? Had he returned to the gentle Shirone she knew?
"Shirone, thank you. If it weren't for you—"
"You make me angry."
Shirone didn't even meet her eyes; he stared at the ground.
"You really make me angry."
Then he turned away coldly and walked off.
Even now she couldn't understand why he had saved her.
Just before the axe would have split her skull, an intense impulse seized him. After that, his rage burst forth and he could remember nothing more.
Amy bowed her head in a sulk.
Reina, quietly hoping the two would reconcile, patted her shoulder.
"Don't be so down. If we save Shirone, all the misunderstandings—"
Before Reina could finish, Amy snapped her head up.
Her face was brighter than expected, even a little relieved.
"I'm okay. Anyway, Shirone saved me. Apparently he doesn't hate me to the bone. That's enough. Haha!"
Reina could tell how much Amy was grieving beneath the words.
She had been clinging desperately, only to save Shirone.
"All right, let's hang on a bit longer."
Reina glanced at Armin. He'd been moving through the deep ranks of the antitheses to disrupt the enemy; his clothes were soaked with sweat.
"Have all the antitheses disappeared?"
"They're not gone. But there shouldn't be any more manipulated antitheses. Still—don't relax. Fundamentally they're mental constructs that criticize Shirone."
After a short rest in the square they followed Shirone into the castle. The Ignite had been here moments before, but no more projectiles flew.
Shirone led them down into the basement and walked a twisting, maze-like corridor without hesitation.
They opened the storeroom door to find another staircase leading deeper down.
On the first underground level, Armin took a torch and descended beside Shirone. At an old wooden door he stopped the group and turned to them.
"Beyond this door is the dream world, the REM Realm. There are a few things you need to know before entering. You've all dreamed before, but the physical laws here differ from reality. Think of it simply as focus."
"Like concentration?"
"Similar. Reality is a cycle of focus and relaxation. In ordinary life, the relaxation sections dominate. But dreams are nothing but focus. They follow a dramatic structure, like a play. You see only what you want to see; other situations don't exist. If you lose focus, you lose yourself. We call that a lilpin."
Armin spread five fingers.
"Lilpin is divided into five major types. First, a sensation of floating. Second, meaningless muttering. Third, repetition of the same section. Fourth, viewpoint detachment. Fifth, the materialization of anxiety."
Amy felt she understood. These were things she'd often experienced in dreams.
"Dreams only mimic gravity; there's no true gravity. Keep confirming the feeling of your feet on the ground. The moment you feel weightless you'll drift upward endlessly. And don't say anything you don't truly believe."
"So dialogue needs focus. Like a script."
"Exactly. Habitual slang won't do. If you lose language focus you'll end up repeating meaningless phrases."
"Is repetition of the same section a spatial focus problem?"
"Yes. Don't turn around absentmindedly or run off. You'll lose focus and loop the same segment. Fourth, if you concentrate on the surrounding situation, you lose yourself and fall into the observer's perspective. Lastly, don't dwell on anxious thoughts."
"They'll become real and drag you back to waking."
Armin nodded at Reina.
Lost in thought, Amy asked, "What if someone falls into a lilpin? For example, if I start floating up in the floating lilpin, or if I can't stop muttering meaningless things?"
"If it isn't everyone at once, we can pull you out. If Amy starts floating, we'll pull her back; if she can't stop muttering, we might slap her."
Amy puffed her cheeks as if she'd already been slapped.
Reina asked, "And if we can't pull someone out?"
"Eventually they'll latch onto a new focus. But it won't be Shirone's focus—it'll be ours. In the end, they'll start dreaming a new dream."
"A dream within a dream."
"Exactly. That's why Drimo is called a multi-dimensional world. If it's your own dream, that's fine. But this is someone else's world. If you sink too deeply, you may never escape the dream."
They all tensed at Armin's words.
"Don't worry. Shirone is walking toward the next exit; we only need to focus on following him. That should be fine."
Shirone drew a deep breath and grasped the door handle.
"All right… I'll open it."
With Armin's consent, the door eased open.
A faint melody drifted out, then the court musicians' playing filled the air.
At the familiar scene Amy narrowed her eyes.
"This place is…?"
Countless couples danced in the grand hall. It was the ballroom of Kazra Palace where they had been only hours before.
Armin hurriedly added what he'd missed.
"The REM Realm is one fluid space. It's like multiple plays performed on the same stage. If the backdrop is the grand hall, the exit should be nearby."
"That's the exit."
Shirone pointed to the far side of the ballroom.
Amy thought she understood. It was the door she and Zion had used to leave the grand hall. Shirone had probably gone out that door to find her—and that was how this whole mess had started.
'It was my fault.'
She forced a bitter smile.
If she hadn't followed Zion, if she'd refused his request, would Shirone be in a different situation now?
'He has every reason to hate me.'
"Amy, don't lose focus."
Amy snapped to attention and took steadying breaths, keeping her gaze clear.
"Yes, I'm ready."
"Then let's go. Shirone, walk straight but avoid bumping into people as much as possible."
Shirone moved cautiously. He paused when couples danced past; a wrong detour could trigger a lilpin.
Amy and Reina watched only the back of Shirone's head. Armin, by contrast, strolled with his eyes scanning the surroundings. He'd earned a lucid-dream qualification to perform certain tasks.
'What exactly happened here?'
With Shirone's real body facing a gruesome death, the REM Realm's condition was likely a nightmare as well.
The tension tightened. At any moment, everyone in the ballroom could turn into monsters, or people might suddenly go mad and slaughter one another.
Yet nothing unusual happened even after they'd crossed half the ballroom.
The path behind them had already passed its focus, so the chance of anything erupting there was effectively nil.
'Strange. What sort of nightmare is this?'
Armin's eyes brightened as he spotted something.
'Of course—that's it.'
At the center of the ballroom danced a man and a woman. The woman wore a rose-red dress and was beautiful. The man's features were grotesque.
His eyes were pulled entirely upward, his nose snubbed, and his lips smaller than a chicken's vent. It was a human face formed in a way impossible in reality.
'Someone must have hated him a lot.'
If that were all, no great harm would come to outsiders. But for Shirone it would be a horrific nightmare.
Armin turned his gaze and noticed someone serving near a long table.
He wore steppe clothing that didn't fit the palace: a red cap, a neatly kept beard, and a pipe clenched in his mouth as if smoking bans meant nothing.
The only being who wasn't a projection of Shirone—the Mongin Luber, dispatched from Drimo.
Luber glanced at Armin and gave a wink. Armin glanced back without interest and then turned away.
This was not someone to greet out of mere curiosity. Mongin couldn't be analyzed by human intellect. They simply existed, and were acknowledged as such—nothing more.
When Shirone reached the exit, the focus of the path they'd come through ended and the music faded.
Was the ball still going on in the grand hall? Curiosity tugged, but no one looked back.