"Where am I?" said Caina.
"You are within the artificial dream realm created by the dagger," said the Master of Dreams. "I practiced the forbidden sciences of oneiromancy, blasphemous to the Burning Flame, and created this dagger as a weapon against my enemies. Using it, I would control the dreams of my foes, and plant compulsions and commands within their minds."
"But something went wrong," said Caina, "didn't it?"
"You are correct," said the Master of Dreams. "Unfortunately, my creation was flawed. At best, it would induce homicidal insanity in its victims. At worst, it would kill them in a particularly horrible fashion - their blood would erupt from every orifice, killing them in a matter of moments."
"I noticed," said Caina.
"I attempted to repair the flawed spells," said the Master of Dreams, "but the process went amiss, and I killed myself in the attempt. All that remains is this imprint of my memories upon the dagger's binding spells." The shade looked around the empty whiteness. "Spells which are now collapsing."
“Collapsing?” said Caina. “What do you mean?”
"I sense two minds linked to the dagger," said the Master of Dreams. "Yours, and the woman attempting to kill you. When you struck her dream-image, you shattered one of the controlling spells upon the dagger. The rest are now unraveling. The dream realm your opponent created vanished, and you found yourself here."
"So the dagger's spells are about to break," said Caina. "And when they do, I wake up."
"Your assessment is optimistic," said the Master of Dreams. "If your mind is still linked to the dagger when the spells collapse, it will almost certainly result in your death."
"Then if this is a dream," said Caina, "why can’t I just wake up?"
"You cannot," said the Master of Dreams, "because you were brought here against your will. You can only escape by overpowering the one who brought you here."
"Helena," said Caina. "How?"
"The controlling spells have collapsed," said the Master of Dreams. "She can no more end the artificial dream than you can. You must therefore face each other in a contest of will. Should you prevail, you will awaken without harm."
"And if Helena prevails?" said Caina.
"Then your mind will be linked to the dagger when the spells unravel," said the Master of Dreams, "and you will die."
"A contest of will?" said Caina. "What does that mean?"
The Master of Dreams gestured at the white nothingness. "This is the dream realm. Your thoughts create the reality here. Wield your mind against hers, and you shall prevail. Or she shall destroy you."
"Thoughts make reality?" said Caina.
She lifted her right hand and stared at it, imaging a dagger. She remembered the heft of a weapon, the feel of a hilt against her fingers, the gleam of the blade...
A dagger appeared in her hand.
"Nice trick," said Caina, turning the blade over.
"It is no trick," said the Master of Dreams, "merely the applied force of your will altering..."
Caina ignored him and concentrated on herself. Her nightfighter clothes appeared around her, the black jacket, the black pants, the black boots and gloves. Her shadow-cloak fell from her shoulders, and her belt of weapons wrapped itself around her waist.
"A door," said Caina. "I want a door that will take me to Helena."
A steel door appeared before her, the exact color of her throwing knives.
Caina took a deep breath, opened the steel door, and stepped through it.
Chapter 9 - Take My Memories
A storm raged overhead, lightning dancing through the clouds.
The lightning illuminated a surreal landscape. Caina stood on a cliff of lusterless black ice overlooking a jagged valley. Mountains and peaks and crags rose around her, all carved from the same black ice. She saw no traces of any living things, neither plants nor animals nor people.
The silver door stood at the far end of the valley.
A web of cracks covered the silvery door, leaking fiery light of their own. The door was starting to shatter, just as the spells upon the dagger had begun to unravel. Caina wondered what would happen when they broke entirely.
She didn't want to be here to find out.
"Caina Amalas!"
The voice screamed from the black sky, the lightning rumbling overhead in answer.
Helena appeared before the silver door, clad in black armor that looked as if it had been fashioned by a blacksmith with a taste for the macabre. Spikes and metal skulls adorned the plates, and the reliefs across the cuirass showed Reorn dying upon a wooden stake. A twelve foot spear of glittering black ice rested in Helena's right hand. The thing was twice her height and at least thrice her weight, but Helena hefted the weapon as if it were a slender branch.
"You ruined it!" said Helena. "I could have had everything I wanted! Money, freedom, and Reorn rotting in the ground! But you had to come along and ruin everything!"
"You murdered Tormalus and Maelana," said Caina.
Helena laughed. "I have seen into your mind! I know you detest the magi, Ghost. If I had not killed Tormalus, you would have done so!"
"Only if he had abused the dagger the way you have," said Caina. "And you murdered Maelana."
"She deserved it!" said Helena. "Reorn thought to divorce me and wed her! Well, she died screaming, and I'll do the same to Reorn."
"Not unless I stop you," said Caina.
"But you won't," said Helena, grinning beneath her black helm. "I spoke with the shade of the Ashbringer that forged this dagger, and I know how to prevail. I will break you, Ghost, and return to the waking world. And when I do, I will trap Reorn's mind here, and blame the deaths upon you."
"Brave words," said Caina. "Are you bold enough to act upon them?"
In answer, Helena flung the massive black spear.
She stood hundreds of yards away, yet the spear shot across the valley with incredible speed. Caina threw herself to the left, moving as fast as she could. She knew how fast her legs could take her in the waking world, but her, in this strange dream, her thoughts threw her forward terrific speed.
The spear slammed into the ledge where Caina had been standing, and the black cliff exploded into a billion jagged shards of ice. The ledge disintegrated beneath Caina's boots, and she jumped, soaring over the valley like a stone fired from a catapult, her shadow-cloak billowing behind her.
She plunged down, daggers angled to stab.
Helena turned and sped away.
Caina thrust both of her boots down, imagining the ice beneath her shattering.
She struck the valley floor...and the sheet of black ice exploded for a hundred yards in every direction. The mountains echoed with the terrible cracking noise, and a shock wave of jagged ice swept through the valley. The blast knocked Helena from her feet, sent her sprawling with a clang of black armor.
Caina snatched a throwing knife from her belt. Her throwing knives could not penetrate steel plate, but she imagined the knife glowing white-hot, a shard of molten metal to rip through Helena’s armor like paper. The knife smoked in her hand, and Caina flung one blade, and then another. Helena scrambled back to her feet with a curse, and the first white-hot knife screamed past her, leaving a melted furrow in the icy ground. The second clipped Helena’s shoulder, shattering the armor plate and staggering the older woman.
Caina shot forward, thunder booming her wake, daggers angled for Helena.
But Helena stomped her armored foot. The entire valley shook again, more shards of jagged ice raining from the broken cliffs. Caina stumbled and lost her balance. Helena gestured, her face straining with concentration.
And the cliffs and mountains of black ice transmuted into walls of bubbling lava. Hellish light filled the valley, the heat striking Caina like a blow. The cliffs and mountains melted, a towering wall of lava rushing towards her.
“Burn!” shouted Helena, and she jumped, vanishing into the storm clouds overhead.
Caina watched the sea of lava surge towards her. How to escape the lava? She couldn’t outrun it, and in a matter of moments the entire valley would drown beneath liquid stone.
The answer occurred to her.
If Helena could fly, then why couldn’t she?
Caina sprang into the air, soaring over the lava as it swallowed the valley whole. She stabbed into the clouds, her shadow-cloak snapping and billowing behind her. Lightning snarled and flashed overhead, and she caught a glimpse of Helena flying through the clouds.
Caina willed herself towards the black-armored woman.
Helena pointed, and a dozen lightning bolts shot into Caina. The blasts sent her spinning head over heels. Agony erupted through her, her arms and legs twitching of their own volition. Caina felt herself tumbling back towards the seething ocean of lava.
But the pain wasn’t real.
Her descent stopped.
Caina willed herself back towards the clouds. Helena pointed again, but this time Caina was ready. The lightning bolts struck her and rebounded, deflected by her thoughts. Caina rose above the clouds, lightning flashing below her, and a dark and empty sky rising above.
She saw the clouds ripple as Helena flew through them, like a fish swimming through murky water.
If Helena could change the black ice to burning lava…then why couldn’t Caina do the same to the clouds?
She concentrated, focusing on the writhing clouds below her.
And all at once they transmuted from cloud to earth. The city of Malarae rose up beneath Caina, rows upon rows of mansions and warehouses and tenements and docks. If Caina guessed right, Helena was now in Malarae’s dockside warehouse district. Helena might have been born in Malarae, but Caina suspected she did not know the dockside streets and alleyways.
Caina plunged back to earth, her boots making no sound against the street, and hurried from shadow to shadow. The shadows flowed around her in response to her mental command, and she moved far more quickly and with greater stealth than she could have managed in the waking world.
“Face me, Ghost!” screamed Helena. A black-armored shape shot overhead, holding an enormous axe fashioned of living flame. Helena fell to earth like a comet and began stalking through the street, making warehouses and taverns disappear with a wave of her hand. Yet Caina remained hidden. The shadows followed her, keeping her wrapped in the darkness.
Helena could not find her.
“Come out, damn you!” shouted Helena. “You cannot hide forever.”
Caina didn’t intend to.
Helena walked past her hiding place, and Caina focused upon the daggers in her fists. They began to glow white-hot, like bolts of captured lightning. Helena started to turn, sensing something amiss, but it was too late.
Caina sprang upon her, both the blades punching through Helena’s armor to sink deep into her flesh.
Helena screamed in pain and slammed her armored fist into Caina’s chest. The force of the blow hurled her backwards, and she smashed through a dozen brick walls like a tumbling boulder, coming to a ragged stop on one of the piers jutting into the harbor. Pain flooded through her, and she could not stand.
Helena bellowed again, and the city of Malarae exploded. Warehouses crumbled into dust, and the mansions of the nobles toppled and collapsed. The Imperial Citadel itself wavered atop its crag and slid down the side of the mountain in an avalanche of white rock. The ground heaved and bucked, great chasms opening in the earth to swallow the ruined city.
And in the midst of the chaos, Caina saw the silver door.
It stood at the end of a street, floating a few feet above the cobblestones. Deeper cracks rent the silver metal, and the fiery light leaking through the door had gotten brighter. Helena had been so desperate to lure Caina through that door. But what if…
Helena dropped from the sky and buried her axe in Caina’s chest.
Caina shrieked, agony flooding through her limbs. The fiery axe had torn through the steel plates lining her jacket like paper, and she felt blood flowing down her torso to spill against the ground. She tried to stand, tried to push out the axe, but could not move through the pain that flooded her body.
Helena snarled as a yawning chasm opened in the trembling ground next to Caina.
Dimly, Caina wondered how Helena had survived the dagger wounds.
“Die,” Helena spat. She ripped her axe free from Caina’s flesh, blood sizzling on the fiery blade, and Caina rolled over the edge and toppled into the chasm.
She tumbled into the darkness, smoke pouring from the gaping wound in her chest. The darkness reached for her.
One thought flickered through her mind.
How had Helena survived those wounds?
The answer came to her.
Because Caina had not actually stabbed Helena. In fact, she had done nothing to Helena’s body at all. Their bodies lay unconscious in Reorn’s storeroom. Caina had only dreamed that she had stabbed Helena, and one could not die from a wound inflicted in a dream.
Which meant that Caina’s axe wound, too, was not real.
It vanished from her chest.
She concentrated, and her fall stopped. She floated in midair, chunks of wreckage from Malarae falling around her. This was all a dream, and none of it was real. How, then, could she defeat Helena, if she had no real weapons?
That silver door.
Helena had tried to lure Caina through that door over and over.
And what would happen, Caina wondered, if she forced Helena through the door?
She rose upward, borne aloft by her will, and found Helena. The noblewoman circled above the crumbling wreckage of Malarae like a bird of prey, the fiery axe in her hand. Her eyes widened as Caina approached.
They hovered over the collapsing city, facing each other.
“How is it,” snarled Helena, “that you are still alive?”
“I had a dream that a fool hit me with an axe,” said Caina. “But it turns out that dreams can’t kill you.”
“I understand this place better than you, Ghost,” said Helena. “Thoughts are real here. Memories are real here.” She smiled. “Maybe I can’t kill you. But I can shatter your mind so you wake up as a drooling idiot.”