This door was wooden and imposing, but in a beautifully severe fashion, like the gateways of ancient fortresses and castles one might find partially preserved in a museum. Large black latches ran horizontally along the door’s height, though thankfully they appeared to all be undone. The door was framed by a finely-cut stone border, and atop that border was a rectangular stone carving: a shield with two swords crossed over it.

  Lucy gazed at the carving with mixed anticipation. At the very least, this insignia didn’t hint at any sort of darkness, so she hoped that meant she wouldn’t have to trudge through this Dream completely blind and helpless. But the sword and shield were symbols with a clear meaning, especially above a medieval-style door like this one.

  Would she have to do battle with real knights?

  The notion of fighting human opponents, as opposed to the monstrous arms from Cole’s Dream, or…whatever was chasing her in that Dream of darkness, filled Lucy with a new kind of anxiety. She wasn’t sure if she could strike another person with her sword, let alone kill them if she had to, even if these “people” were figments of a Dream.

  But perhaps she didn’t have to get violent. After all, the solution to Cole’s dilemma was to stop fighting and quite literally reach out to his adversaries instead. If Lucy could do that with fiendish, disembodied arms, surely she could also talk it out with mature, well-trained knights who stood by the ideals of valour and honour.

  This was all dependent on a series of assumptions, but Lucy had no choice but to depend on them for what to expect as she swung the doorway’s double doors open and stepped once more into the darkness of the unknown that lulled her into a brief but total sleep.

  When Lucy’s senses returned, she was blinded by a bright, piercing light. Her gratitude toward not being plunged into darkness was eclipsed by her reflex to bring her arm up to shield her eyes. As she did so, her arm’s chain mail clanged as it struck something hard at her side. Surprised, Lucy looked there and saw a wall made up of stone bricks. At her other side was a similar wall spaced quite close, perhaps just enough to let a person or two through between these two walls. From that, she guessed she was standing at the mouth of an alleyway.

  Beyond the alleyway was a bright blue sky holding a sun at its brightest; despite the blinding greeting just moments ago, Lucy was thankful for it. Piercing the skyline were fine crimson roofs, topping stone buildings built the same way as the alleyway’s walls. Farther on the horizon loomed a stone structure far larger than the others.

  A castle.

  It was similar in grandeur to the one from Lucy’s Final Dream, but its towers and turrets traded the pristine white of the King’s castle for a severe and moody grey, and when the shadow of a cloud fell over it, it darkened more than should be possible. From the houses that filled the distance and the hustle and bustle of footsteps and clamouring voices, Lucy surmised that she was in a kind of castle town.

  “You there!” shouted a voice—a voice from a man just a few yards away, encased head to toe in blindingly bright silver armour. Three others were with him, looking almost identical, and all at once they turned toward Lucy with their voices clamouring over each other.

  “You’re with them, aren’t you?”

  “Your memory right shot, you idiot? She don’t look nothing like ‘em!”

  “But she’s clearly one o’ them!”

  “Oh? An’ what makes you so bloody sure?”

  “Look behind her, you blind ol’ bat!”

  The last of those shouts made Lucy’s blood run cold as she spun round to look behind her. Sure enough, there were other people in the alley behind her: two women, a man, and a child, all dressed very differently but clearly not under whatever faction these armoured troops associated with.

  Before Lucy could speak or even really take in the people she was looking at, the man slapped his hand on his forehead and said: “Shit, why’d backup have to come now?”

  “Whatever,” said one of the women. “We can’t get out through this alley, so we’re gonna have to fight. Hey! New girl!”

  Lucy looked at her, wide-eyed. “Me?”

  “Yeah, you!” said the woman. She wore a jumpsuit that looked sleek and aerodynamic, but patterned in green-and-brown camouflage like a soldier’s uniform, complete with what appeared to be a gun strap wrapped over her torso and shoulder. “You’re a Dream Knight like us, right? Help us fend off these goons so we can protect the Dreamer!”

  She nodded toward the child, a young boy who couldn’t have been older than seven or eight, who stared at Lucy—or perhaps the armoured foes behind her—with wide misty eyes and shaking legs. He held onto the camouflage woman’s hand, but she let go before kneeling down and speaking softly to the boy: “Kenneth, we’re going to fight, so can you hide again? Please? I promise we’ll come back for you.”

  The boy, Kenneth, stared at her a while before nodding and scampering off, disappearing into the shadows of balconies toward the back of the alley.

  “You heathens!” yelled one of the armoured troops, pointing in the direction Kenneth had gone. “Don’t let him get away!”

  With a rallying cry, the four troops rushed toward Lucy and the other three Dream Knights.

  A swooshing sound cut through the air as the camouflage woman zoomed forward, climbing up the wall with superhuman speed to perch onto a balcony. Her arms moved in a flourishing movement so fast that Lucy couldn’t register what was happening until she saw the end result: the woman holding her rifle in her hands, eye already up to the scope as the barrel pointed down at the troops below.

  In that same moment, the man ran past Lucy straight toward the troops on the ground. Though he moved faster than his large, heavy stature would suggest, he wasn’t nearly as fast as the woman with the rifle, and so Lucy was able to see as he ran past that he wore a white robe with a large black drawstring belt—it took Lucy a moment to recognize it as a gi, like what a martial artist wore.

  “That sword just for show?”

  The last of the other Dream Knights, the woman who had not spoken till now, ran past Lucy and nudged her shoulder, rather roughly for what Lucy had assumed was an encouraging gesture. She was armoured like Lucy, but instead of a tunic she had a white toga that ran from beneath her torso’s cuirass down to just below her knees, along with a red cape billowing out behind her like proud blood in the wind. Most striking of all was her helmet: brilliant silver, much like Lucy’s circlet, but adorned at the top with a tall red plume that seemed to cleave the sky itself. She looked like a warrior of ancient Greece, or Rome, if Lucy’s quick recollection of history was correct.

  “Hmph.” The helmeted woman, still looking back over her shoulder at Lucy, scoffed with a disdainful expression. “Go ahead and stand there all you want, then. You might think swords are cool and all that, but this here is a lot more practical for quick kills.”

  She turned away from Lucy to face in the direction she was running, and it was then that Lucy noted the weapon—the Ideal—she held in her hand. A spear, long, thin, but imposing in its rigid linearity, topped with an iron blade so sharp the tip was red with fresh blood. However, Lucy soon realized this wasn’t blood, but a red aura that emanated from the tip, much like the faint blue aura that engulfed her Ideal’s blade. The red aura also emanated from the opposite end of the spear, and Lucy got the impression that this aura ran the whole length of the weapon as a single, true, unimpeded straight line.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Before Lucy could see this spear used in action, Diana and the other Dream Knights, the armoured troops, and Lucy herself all froze mid-action. Seeing the entire world stopped, Lucy mentally gasped in realization.

  Cognizance (I) had activated yet again.

  But how was that possible? None of the enemies had gotten anywhere close to striking distance. As Lucy's gaze hurriedly scanned the scene, she saw that the armoured troop furthest back wasn't running at all. Instead, his legs were perfectly straight and still, his arms raised up to eye level with one gauntleted hand having just let go of a bowstring.

  Lucy gulped. She wasn't sure where he had fired his arrow, but it had to have been somewhere lethal, like her neck or even her face. Either way, she was relieved that the arrow had phased through her and that she was now aware of a skilled archer in the enemy's midst.

  Once time resumed, the archer jolted back in shock and yelped, “What witchcraft is this?”

  Reacting as fast as she could, Lucy ran off to the side so that one of the other armoured troops would be in the line of fire between her and the archer. Lucy wasn't sure if this was sufficient--she wished there was some sort of cover out on this open village street--but her thoughts were interrupted by a loud bang, followed by the archer jumping back and falling on his behind. A plume of smoke rose from a fresh crater in the ground.

  Looking up and to her right, Lucy locked eyes with Keilani, who nodded at Lucy before bringing her eye back to her rifle's scope. I've got this guy, her nod had said.

  Lucy smiled at her, then brought her gaze forward. The armoured troop before Lucy began closing in on her, steps thundering across the stone ground as he drew a broadsword out of his hip-side sheath, a wicked glare attacking Lucy’s eyes from the blade. She had just enough time to grip her Ideal with both hands and swing it in a wide arc in order to parry the incoming blow.

  Her swing was too early. No—the troop had anticipated her swing and stopped just a hair’s length from where Lucy’s blade swept past. Lucy had enough time to realize the foolishness of going for a slow, telegraphed attack—but not enough time to recollect herself from the follow-through of her swing before the troop’s blade swung at her.

  “Hyaaah!”

  The troop shouted, his voice raw with enmity, as his blade crashed down onto Lucy’s left arm. it didn’t cleave through to Lucy’s flesh, thanks to resistance from her chain mail, but the blunt force was enough to bend her arm backward.

  “Augh…!”

  A clang rang out as Lucy dropped her Ideal and clutched at her left arm. A throbbing ache reverberated rapidly down the length of her arm, and moving it in any direction evoked white-hot pain that made Lucy wince. Her opponent, on the other hand, remained unscathed and unperturbed, raising his sword once more.

  “Get back!”

  Lucy and the troop barely had time to look before the troop fell sideways with the sharp metallic cacophony of full armour hitting the ground. The male Dream Knight hugged the troop’s legs: he had dive grabbed the enemy.

  The troop, laying on the ground, raised his sword with both hands for a forward plunging motion, but the Dream Knight seemed to anticipate this and lurched forward, pinning the troop’s legs with his knees while his hands shot up to grab the arms holding that murderous sword.

  “Can you still use it with your other arm?” he called out over his shoulder while pushing back against the troop’s attempts to stab into him.

  Lucy, after taking a moment to gather her wits, picked her Ideal off the ground and gave a quick swing using only her right arm. It didn’t feel as powerful as her two-handed swing, but it still felt right and lethal enough, so she confirmed her ability to switch to a one-handed sword style by nodding to the other Dream Knight.

  “Good,” he said, still struggling against the troop’s sword plunge. “Mind finishing him off? Got my hands full.”

  He grinned, clearly proud of that low-hanging fruit of a joke, and Lucy smiled with a hint of wry bemusement in the same way she always did when Thomas told her a “Yo Mama” joke. It was a pleasant recollection, one that made her feel a bond however small toward these fellow Dream Knights, but it was short-lived as she ran up beside the kerfuffle on the ground and raised her sword over the troop’s neck.

  A million thoughts drowned her, suffocated her. She was about to decapitate another human being, a dreamt-up human being, but a human nonetheless. And yet, perhaps because of the visible tension between the Dream Knight’s hands and the troop’s sword, Lucy’s blood ran hot as she quickly and unabashedly brought her Ideal all the way down.

  The blade met some resistance as it came into contact with the bottom of the troop’s helmet, but it quickly slid down into the gap between the helmet and his cuirass—his neck. Lucy couldn’t see it, but she felt her sword reverberate as it lodged itself into something much softer than metal. The troop jerked, and Lucy’s blood turned to ice as there was no doubt now about what she had struck.

  With her breaths coming in quick gasps, she turned and locked eyes with the male Dream Knight, who gave a solemn frown and a heavy, definite nod.

  Lucy gulped and, keeping her head turned toward him and away from the enemy below, she squeezed her eyes shut and swung down as hard as she could.

  The motion was smooth and almost frictionless, her blade slamming into the stone ground only a moment later. Was it that sharp? Or was there something…wrong with this troop’s neck? She almost hazarded a glance down at her work, but decided against it, instead looking at the Dream Knight who stood up, panting and looking down at his now motionless opponent.

  “Nice one,” he said with a thumbs up. “Saved my bacon there.”

  Before Lucy could respond, hurried footsteps approached, along with the thud of something falling to the ground. She and the other Dream Knight turned around to find the rifle-bearing Dream Knight freshly landed on the ground with her palm down flat and the spear-wielding Dream Knight sprinting back from where three other motionless troops lay sprawled.

  “What are you standing around for?” the spear-wielding Dream Knight shouted at them. “Move!”

  As she turned and bolted down what Lucy now realized was a village road, the rifle-bearing Dream Knight shouted into the alley: “Kenneth! We’re going!”

  “Coming!”

  Out of the shadows, the young Dreamer emerged and ran up to the Dream Knight who had called him, taking her hand. The gi-wearing Dream Knight ran in the same direction as the spear wielder, but the rifle-bearer stayed with Lucy, looking into her bewildered eyes and pointing firmly in the direction her companions had gone.

  “I know you’ve got a ton of questions,” she said, pulling lightly on her handhold with Kenneth to keep him close, “but we need to get far away from here. Fast.”

  “But…why?” Aside from the four defeated troops, who were now motionless piles of armour on the ground, she didn’t see anyone else who looked like pursuers. Some regular folk, dressed in tunics and dirty trousers and other medieval garments, looked at them with wide eyes but quickly hurried along. Just as Lucy was about to point this out, a loud racket of metallic clicking and clacking erupted from where the troops’ motionless bodies lay—including the one Lucy was still standing over.

  “That would be why,” said the rifle-bearer, pulling Kenneth away with her as she ran from where the troops’ bodies—or rather, their disembodied armour—came apart, exhumed black flames out into the air, filled up with new flames and then began reassembling themselves.

  And so Lucy ran, having enough sense to realize that these would-be dead foes were being resurrected.

  She ran as fast as she could in order to catch up with the others, careful not to stumble into village people gawking in confusion or lamp posts that buzzed with some otherworldly energy. There were men with straw hats pushing wheelbarrows filled with familiar but strangely different fruit; young boys duking it out with dull wooden swords while their mother scrubbed clothes in a basket filled with water; and bards in colourful garments singing songs that drew people and birds alike—until Lucy and the others ran through and caused them all to disperse.

  Once she was within earshot of her new comrades, she shouted: “I’m Lucy!”

  The rifle-bearer was the first to turn her head. “Keilani.”

  The martial artist turned on his heel and jogged backwards, shouting, “Ricardo!” before turning back around and resuming full sprint.

  There was a silence, but eventually the last remaining Dream Knight, the one with the red-plumed helmet, raised her spear without looking back and said: “Diana.”

  Keilani slowed down her pace so that she and Kenneth ran beside Lucy. Looking at her with a smile, she said: “Glad to have you aboard, Lucy. We—”

  “Cut the welcome spiel for now!” Diana called back. “We’re hiding—now—so just focus on following my lead.”

  She turned to a building on the side and threw open the door. She waited for a moment, watching the others approach, and then stormed inside, Ricardo following a few seconds later.

  As Lucy drew closer, she read the sign written in a Gothic script:

  Melville Bakery

  Lucy looked at Keilani, perplexed, but Keilani merely nodded and continued running.

  The two of them, along with Kenneth, crossed through the doorway of the bakery just in time to see Diana poise her spear directly at a cowering middle-aged couple.