Chapter 61

  Dream

  As soon as the old Warlock Ogre starts moving, I push myself ahead of the others. Empower flares around me even as I activate Spiral Shot, as well.

  Spiral Shot sounds like a spell that gets expended with a single bullet. It’s right there in the name, after all. Spiral Shot. But it’s a bit trickier than that. The spell actually has a duration attached to it. It doesn’t just affect the first shot, but every shot fired for the entire following second, with the timer starting only after the first shot is fired.

  I checked my Quickdraw class skill before coming in here, too, and wouldn’t you know, it functions almost exactly the same way! The timer starts from the moment it leaves the holster, but it’s still time for multiple shots.

  If Xuhitana’s Iaidoka Quickdraw really is the same skill, I can absolutely picture her cutting down a dozen clustered foes within the window of that single ability. A regular archer like Ayre, though, because of the pulling of the arrow, the drawing, the aiming and the firing, each one having to form a complete cycle, would be very hard-pressed to get more than one extra arrow in, maybe two.

  Even if they were on the same level as the empress, they’d still be far slower in their attack speed than someone who just has to make another swing. This would explain why Spiral Shot is normally considered a sniping skill, making one attack count extra hard.

  I’m definitely not at her level, not at all, but my weapon cheats. It’s far faster than any other weapon in all of Toleste. Back home, the record for speed shooting a M1911 was seven rounds in a single second, but as impressive as that is, that limit was human, not mechanical. At two hundred Agility, boosted up to three hundred-fifty with Empower, I’m betting I can bottom my clip.

  … And I’m sick of my shots being blocked by these ogres!

  Even as I draw, a staff materializes in the warlock’s hands, and sure enough, he immediately erects a barrier. But I unload those overpressured rounds as fast as I can pull the trigger, rivaling an assault rifle for rate of fire as a blitz of lead crashes against his magical wall.

  It flashes, it buckles, and finally, it shatters like glass under the barrage, the last one or two bullets digging into his side.

  “Barrier down,” I shout as I dump the magazine out of the grip, already pulling another out to slam in its place. “Everyone forward!”

  Leuke charges past me, sword drawn back, while Ayre and Korrigan step ahead of me, one releasing his own Spiral Shot and the other ripping forth with a bolt of lightning.

  Before the incoming attacks, the warlock inhales deeply, then belches out a thick, rolling purple fog that crashes into our ranks, engulfing everything within the room. The last thing I see is the backs of my friends disappearing into the mists before it hits me, too.

  * * *

  I snap up in bed, my heart pounding as if I’d just had a nightmare. I think I did, but the details are already escaping me.

  I must have overslept, the sunlight’s already pouring in despite the closed blinds. It’s okay, though, it’s the weekend. Sleeping in is what the weekend’s for.

  I toss my gaze around the room as if to reassure myself it’s really where I am, but it’s just like I left it the night before. There’s my stuffed rabbit on my headboard, staring down judgmentally at me for having a stuffed animal in my twenties.

  My desk is covered with notes, schematics and revisions of schematics. I don’t know why the company wants a water wheel and ground batteries in this day and age when a solar panel array would provide more power, but I get paid to figure out how to make their dreams come true, not wonder why they aren’t normal in the first place.

  I’m stretching my limbs out over my head when my phone suddenly comes to life, buzzing and vibrating like it’s possessed and nearly making me jump all over again.

  Oh, it’s Riley! I swipe up on the green button to accept the call, suppressing a yawn. “Morning, Riley!”

  “Morning?!” the officer’s voice comes over the line. “It’s a quarter past ten! Don’t tell me you just got up?! We’ve been waiting outside for fifteen minutes!”

  I rub the back of my head in embarrassment. “Eheh, sorry, I was up late working on the Anderson project … You should have just knocked!”

  “Remmi Lee, if I’d been knocking any harder, it would have been with the precinct’s battering ram! Hurry up and get ready! I’m here to spend my day off with friends, not stand around on a deck!”

  “You could at least call it a porch …”

  “Porches are on the ground, not three stories up,” my friend replies sharply. “Put some pants on and come let us in! This summer heat is brutal!”

  “Alright, alright, I’ll be right there.”

  A few moments later, I’m still in my night shirt, but I’m pulling on some jeans, and my eyes fall on the drawer of my night stand. My pistol’s there, bullet in the chamber, safety on. I can’t say why, but I want to take it with me. Normally, I wouldn’t think of doing so, not just to go to the mall with friends, let alone letting them into my apartment, but I feel compelled, inexplicably unsafe, like I’m in a dangerous situation. Probably the remnant of my nightmare.

  Ah, screw it, I already know Riley’s carrying her service weapon, and it’s a constitutional carry state. I pull the gun out and, just for extra safety, pop the magazine out and clear the chambered round, slipping it back into the top of the magazine before sliding the magic rectangle back in. Safety on, chamber empty. I get it in my inside-the-waistband holster and slip the whole thing into the small of my back, then pull my shirt back over the top again.

  Thus prepared for whatever it is I think my friends are going to pull, I head to the front door to let them in.

  And there they are when I open the door. Riley’s standing there in a loose blouse and jeans, arms crossed and her red hair just making her look even angrier with me at being made to wait. Beside her, Ayre is much more appropriately attired for the weather in a short sundress tied off with a sash of darker blue at the waist and a matching scarf of light, airy fabric around her neck. Always the fashionable one, that one, making us look like schlubs.

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  … Wait …

  “Ayre,” I spit out before I can stop to think about what I’m saying, “why do you have tits?!”

  She looks down at the bulges emerging from her chest, touching them with her hands as if confirming their presence. “... Am I not supposed to?”

  That shifts the hair around the sides of her head, and my attention flips again. “And what happened to your ears?!”

  Her hands go up to her rounded, perfectly normal ears reflexively, but Riley rolls her eyes, and her whole head with them.

  “You’re being weird, Remmi,” she scolds me and immediately starts ushering me back inside, Ayre hesitating but following a moment behind her. “And we’re burning daylight! Come on, hurry up and get ready before you get us stuck in rush hour!”

  I finish getting ready, and we head out to the mall like we had planned. There’s enough different stores to cater to all of our interests there, including several sports and outdoors stores for Riley, plenty of clothing stores for Ayre, and lots of electronics stores for me, though I do spend my time and drop some funds in those outdoors stores, too. It’s been a while since I left the countryside, and there’s not as much use for the stuff in the city, but the countryside hasn’t entirely left me, either.

  It’s a couple hours of walking, shopping and talking later that we find ourselves in the food court, all of the friendship and activity almost managing to bury my sense of unease that’s been plaguing me since I woke up. I’m famished since I didn’t get any breakfast, and I am ready for this break in the day’s activities.

  Ayre is poking at a garden salad while nodding along to Riley’s complaining of how her chief keeps putting her with this jerk who thinks sitting in a patrol car watching traffic is a great time for flirting. The redhead manages to maintain her rant even around her burger and fries.

  Both of them pause in their exchange to stare at me when I sit down with the Hambre Supremo Combo weighing down my tray.

  “You work at a table, Remmi,” Riley points out bluntly before I can even unroll the first Burrito Mondo. “All of that’s going to go directly to all of the worst places and you’ll be complaining about it by month’s end.”

  I frown at one of my two best friends, though even Ayre is looking at the spread of food with unspoken concern. “Don’t say that like I don’t get exercise! Besides, I didn’t get any breakfast this morning! I’m hungry!”

  “You didn’t get breakfast because you slept through it,” she immediately counters. “Which is a bad habit you need to make sure you don’t fall into!”

  “I told you, I was working late!”

  Riley starts in on how that’s a bad habit, too, but I’m distracted as my eyes catch a shock of even redder red, and my gaze goes to four new people that just walked into the food court. They’re pretty far away from us, but at least one of them stands out sharply. One’s an Asian man that looks like a science major, another is a young woman that looks incredibly serious, a third is the shortest of them all and almost goes unnoticed in the crowd except for her huge rack. The fourth is the one that drew my attention. He’s big enough to be a football player, and his hair is so vividly red that I can only assume it’s dyed that way.

  An unrelated, pale child with a red backpack runs by the group, holding a magical girl wand over her head as her grandfather follows after her. Just the normal chaos of the mall’s food court lunch rush, a melting pot of countless divisions of society all brought together by their shared need for nourishment.

  But then my attention shifts to the big clock above their heads, and I find myself squinting at it. Is this … really the first time I’ve looked at a clock all day today? I can’t remember doing so this morning, even on my phone. The call from Riley had taken up the screen, instead.

  “Remmi, are you listening to me?”

  I turn back to Ayre and Riley, the former looking worried, the latter looking peeved. Instead of answering her question, however, I ask my own. “... Hey, what time is it?”

  “... I dunno,” the redhead answers with a befuddled look. “A little after noon? One-ish? Why, you suddenly remember a deadline you forgot on a Saturday?”

  I look back to the clock again, then to those figures on the far side of the food court, then back to my friends again. “I’m not sure. I’m definitely forgetting something.”

  “What, like Ayre’s tits?” Riley asks, referencing my earlier odd behavior. “You’ve been off all day, Rem. If there’s something wrong here, it’s with you. Don’t think I didn’t notice you brought your gun out just to let us inside this morning.”

  Ayre jerks her head around to the redhead in surprise at that. “She did?!”

  The officer nods. “Had it stashed in the back of her pants. I noticed it when I chased her back inside. Been carrying it all day, too.”

  I give a growl of frustration, as much with my head as with my friends’ pestering. Something’s wrong, I’m increasingly sure of it, but what? My gaze turns back toward …

  Riley’s hands come down on the table. “And stop staring at that damn clock!”

  I turn back to her again. “No, seriously, what time is it? That clock’s not right.”

  The two of them check the clock out, as well, at that, but their expressions are confused.

  “Looks fine to me,” Riley puzzles.

  “What time does it say?”

  Her fist comes down on the table again. “Damn it, would you stop asking that?! How many times are you going to make me answer?!”

  “You haven’t answered yet,” I point out. “Why can’t anyone tell me what time it is?”

  “Why can’t you check it, yourself?!”

  I turn to Ayre instead. “Ayre, am I awake?”

  She tilts her head in confusion. “I mean, is that a serious question?”

  I’m holding my chin in thought. “It’s like trying to check the time in a dream. I can see it clearly, but I can’t make any sense out of it …”

  … A dream, a dream … That’s important …

  I suddenly straighten up with a gasp. My nightmare! I almost always remember my dreams, but I couldn’t remember this one? But images are starting to come back to me. Swords, bows, staves. Ayre was there, with pointed ears. Same thighs, though. No, Remmi, focus …

  There was a dungeon, and we had to purify the core. We were fighting … ogres! A mage! A …

  … Fudgesticks, an illusion mage!

  I jump up to my feet sharply enough to startle my friends and cause the food trays to rattle.

  “Remmi?!” Ayre asks in shock.

  “What’s wrong now?!” Riley demands.

  “That’s it, I’m dreaming,” I say out loud, mostly to myself, as I turn on the spot. “That’s why things aren’t adding up. I’m still standing in that damn arena, and I’m dreaming!”

  Riley’s getting to her feet now, too, her face etched with concern. “Remmi, what are you talking about?”

  “How to wake up, though? It’s a spell, an effect, I’ve gotta cleanse the effect … Right!”

  “Remmi, please,” Ayre pleads, “you’re scaring us!”

  I suddenly give them both a wide grin that I hope is reassuring. “Don’t worry, it’s all going to be fine soon! I’ll get you out in a minute, too, Ayre!” Then, to my redheaded friend I haven’t seen in months, my smile a little sadder, “Gonna be a bit longer before I get back to you, Rye.”

  I ignore their outbursts now as I close my eyes, clasp my hands and place my index fingers against my forehead like a single, big finger gun and pray to the System this works.

  “PURGE!”

  And the entire food court goes dark and silent.

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