Ricardo let go of Diana, who had gone limp and unconscious, then stood up catching his breath. He stared down at the one he had just inflicted a chokehold on, then turned and faced the hard, questioning eyes of Lucy and Keilani.

  “She was gonna hurt Kenneth,” he stated blankly and gravely. “You saw it too, didn’t you, Lucy?”

  Lucy nodded; she should have figured that Ricardo would come to the same conclusion.

  Keilani gave a big shrug. “I want to say thank you, but I know Diana’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up. And now we’re down a fighter.”

  “Who said anything about fighting?” said Ricardo. “We need to split, pronto.”

  “We’re running?” said Lucy.

  “You saw what happened with Kei’s and Diana’s Feats,” said Ricardo. “If Diana couldn’t make a dent, that’s bad news.”

  “But…” Lucy, mentally slapping herself after realizing how obvious the situation was, asked: “Don’t you have a Feat you could try as well?”

  Ricardo stared at her, wide-eyed, then pondering, before shaking his head earnestly “Nah. Based on what I’ve seen, Kei and Diana are better at killing big things than I am. It’s better we don’t waste time or resources.”

  Lucy nodded. She wished she had a Feat to contribute to the offensive, but all she had was the passive Cognizance (I).

  “Hey, don’t get yourself down,” Ricardo said with a knowing smile. “We’ll figure something out, with or without Feats. But for now we gotta move. I’ll take Diana. Can you guys get Kenneth?”

  Keilani nodded. “We’ll try our best.” She smiled at Lucy, urging her to follow.

  When they walked up to Kenneth, he was still crying and apologizing while the gigantic queen laughed at him, her mirth feasting upon his overwhelming distress. Lucy glared at her, but the queen paid no heed, as if Lucy were little more than a golden-headed fly.

  Lucy wrapped her right hand around her Ideal’s handle, taking a white-knuckled grip. She really was small and ineffectual before this enemy, and unlike her companions, she hadn’t even tried to fight. Keilani had said that more Dream Knights are summoned into a Dream to provide sorely-needed aid—but was Lucy actually providing any aid at all?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Keilani striding on ahead of her, calling out: “Kenneth. Kenneth. I’m right here.”

  Lucy cast her gaze down to her feet. Even the one thing she could do, providing support and reassurance to this Dream’s Dreamer, was being taken care of by someone else who was far better suited to the task—and without an Understanding alignment to boot.

  “Kenneth? Kenneth? Can you hear me?”

  Keilani had knelt down, putting her hand on Kenneth’s trembling shoulder, but the child seemed wholly oblivious to her presence. She looked back over her shoulder at Lucy with eyes of concern. “Hey. Can you try talking to him?”

  “Me?” was Lucy’s immediate question.

  “You’re Understanding, right? You might have a better chance getting through to him.”

  “Right,” Lucy said, giving a quick and somewhat clumsy nod. It was an obvious line of logic—one didn’t need to be aligned with Ideation to come up with it—but somehow the idea hadn’t crossed Lucy’s mind until now. Was it because she was so sure Kenneth would respond to Keilani after how much he had clung to her? Or was it because she couldn’t even conceive of herself being the one to solve this problem?

  “You good?” said Keilani.

  “Y-yeah,” Lucy said, nodding again, this time more assuredly as she forced herself out of her mental rut. She had to stop herself from shrinking away again, from believing she was small. Last time, she had escaped those beliefs by taking steps forward, steps that she had so thoroughly believed were nonexistent. So now, she did the same as she put one foot in front of the other before Keilani, before the laughing monstrosity of a queen, before the still-unconscious Diana on Ricardo’s back, in order to reach the tiny soul who was even smaller and more helpless.

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  After kneeling down by Kenneth’s side, she couldn’t bring herself to move. Seeing his crying form up close was enough to make one’s heart turn to lead. Moisture glistened from his hands as they wiped ceaselessly at his tears, tears that came from eyes red and puffy and completely unable to see anything except the giant before him who was all but inescapable. His chest and shoulders heaved as if his body, his very being, was about to collapse in on itself. Yet, despite all that, his mouth continued to move, his trembling lips contorted in patterns of anguish as he continued to choke out the same mantra of self-deprecation:

  “I’m sorry! I’m the killer! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “Yes, you are, brat!” The queen broke her thunderous laughter to boom words down at the boy. “Accept it! Accept that you are to be punished forever!”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Kenneth cried back, making the queen grin hideously as she surged again in height.

  “Kenneth,” said Lucy. She spoke loud and firm, but with as measured of a calm as she could muster in this situation. Still, Kenneth did not regard her presence.

  Lucy grimaced, eyes wide with worry. She was at a loss, and her gaze snapped back toward Keilani and Ricardo. They looked back at her with the same uncertainty, but with a hint of panic as well, panic at realizing that their last resort may not be able to do anything after all.

  The familiar pinprick of tears stung at Lucy’s eyes, but she forced them back as she tried her best to remain composed in front of everyone. She resented the other Dream Knights almost as much as the gloating queen, resented them for placing this monumental pressure on her shoulders, but at the same time she couldn’t blame them, for she resented herself in this moment of inaction. Why was it that when her impact mattered most, she couldn’t rise up to make it happen?

  She stared at Kenneth, sobbing uncontrollably in a self-made void where nothing else existed, and she thought back to that tense moment on Cole’s boat where Cole had been adamant about Lucy leaving him alone. Back then, she had been able to connect prior information that Cole had told her with some details about their situation and the enemies they faced, ultimately coming up with the solution that rescued Cole for good.

  But Lucy couldn’t do the same thing here. Kenneth had barely spoken to her, and even Keilani was lost as to why he was reduced to such a state. They needed to get into his heart to soothe him, but Kenneth hadn’t let them in, and now he was actively pushing everyone and everything away.

  Lucy, still kneeling down beside him, gripped her knees. In many ways, she was reminded of Thomas, shaking his head with exasperation and weariness whenever their eyes met in the hallway and he went off to lock himself in his room. Lucy had always gone back into her own room, telling herself that Thomas had made it clear he needed space, and that the time would come when she would be able to talk openly with him. But what if she had simply been justifying her inaction? What if Thomas had been sobbing like this in his room, hopelessly alone with the shadow of insurmountable adversity engulfing his entire world—and she had just gone off to the side, letting it happen so close to her, just as she was now?

  Lucy was too overwhelmed to register what happened next: she felt her eyes overflow with hot tears, and her throat ached so much it burnt, but after this whirlwind of involuntary sensation, she found her arms wrapped tightly around Kenneth’s trembling form.

  She was more than shocked at how her body had moved in for an embrace entirely on its own, and her cheeks burned at the thought of Keilani and Ricardo watching her go to these lengths for a little boy she barely knew. But her attention was drawn down to where Kenneth’s head was nestled against her shoulder, his tears running down her epaulettes and tunic as he continued to sob and speak even with his voice muffled.

  “Kenneth, it’s okay,” Lucy spoke in a low, gentle voice. She held him closer and lowered her head as if to protect his. “I’m here for you.”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” His muffled voice was barely audible through Lucy’s shoulder, but it was clear from his tremulous voice and the continuous shakes that rattled his body that he was still in just as much distress as before.

  Lucy looked at him, eyes wide with despair. When she had seen him sobbing all alone, shutting out everything else around him, a subconscious notion had stirred within her, saying that what he needed was someone at his side. But if that wasn’t enough to bring him to his senses, what was? Was the damage done to his spirit already too severe, past the point of irreversible?

  Lucy bit back tears, not wanting to believe that was the case, because if it was, then Thomas…

  “What irrevocable proof of your accursed existence!” The queen leaned over, her massive bloodshot eyes engulfing Lucy and Kenneth’s comparatively tiny figures. “So hideous, so blasphemous, so absolutely loathsome within that you cannot accept love! As befits a detestable killer!”

  Lucy was shaking at the sight of the enormous eyes glowering at her, eyes that regarded her as a mere speck easily swatted away into oblivion—but the queen’s arrogant words made Lucy’s eyes narrow, her body still as a lake but burning within.

  After holding the queen’s glare for a moment, Lucy looked down at Kenneth, the fire still in her eyes. “Don’t listen to her. It’s not your fault, Kenneth. It’s not your fault.”

  Kenneth sobbed and sniffled—then raised his head and stared right into Lucy’s eyes.

  “It’s not?”

  Lucy gasped. Those were the first different words he had spoken after what had felt like an eternity of apologizing.

  “Huh?”

  The queen grunted out a sound of confusion. Her eyes flicked back and forth, looking at herself, her as-yet unbroken sneer drooping into an incredulous grimace. Lucy saw it as well: she had stopped growing.