Bog Standard Isekai

Book 3. Chapter 56

The dream began in Alheadra, but not in the city below. Aberfa stood in front of enormous black gates rising incredibly high into the air, but still only the small basement floor of Arcaena’s massive citadel. He could see now that it was deceptively large; everything was in such large proportions that he hadn’t quite understood the size of it when he viewed it from far away.

His body’s mother was different tonight. She was pitch black, a walking, breathing void of light. She smiled. “You made the right decision. Now come and I will reveal all.”

“No tricks. I want the secret first. I’m not doing anything else until you give me what you promised.”

Her grin grew wider. “Yes of course! That is my desire as well.”

She turned and opened the massive gates as easily as flicking open her own front door and the dream shifted.

The world looked like it had all been scrawled by a pencil on paper, like they were living in the sketch that might soon become a children’s story book. The dark shape of Aberfa waved and a flower-covered plain grew up from the worn yellow page, reaching towards a fairy-tale castle in the distance. “Once upon a time, before there was a nation called Arcaena there was a nation named Edelor. The nation was peaceful and just and its champions were righteous. Wisest and strongest of all these champions was a man named Bouwen. He was fair of face, strong of arm, as well as kind and good. He did good wherever he went and struck down tyrant and monster alike.”

The world shifted quickly like the sudden flapping of pages, and Brin was treated to several scenes of a knight in shining armor striving against perilous foes, and just as many pages of him being celebrated wherever he went.

“I once told you that there was no such thing as evil Classes. Did you believe me when I told you that?”

“No,” Brin answered.

Aberfa sang out a string of tinkling laughter. “Fair enough. But I will implore you to believe me when I say this: there are such things as good Classes. Bouwen had such a Class. A Legendary Class. He was a [Paladin].”

Brin sucked in a mouthful of air. He had barely heard anything of Legendary Classes. As far as he knew, even [Archmage of the Mystical Elements] was only an Epic Class.

“It’s strange to hear you praise a man like this,” said Brin.

Aberfa shook out her hair. “How could I not? If all men were such as he, there would be no such thing as [Witches]. But now I fear I must tell you of Bouwen’s folly and fall. After ridding all evil in his own kingdom, he ventured forth to cleanse the world. He traveled high and low and eventually made his way to a powerful coven of [Witches]. One of those very [Witches] was she who was not yet called Arcaena.”

The picture book they were living inside never showed Arcaena’s face, careful to shift around to her back in every scene she was in, and black robes and a hat obscured the figure. He could tell it was her, somehow, even though she was always surrounded by a dozen other [Witches].

“They did battle. Their war was fierce and rearranged the landscape and caused natural calamities. For years afterwards, the nearby lands were plagued with floods on one hand, and droughts on the other. Then it was over. At great cost, Bouwen was slain,” said Aberfa.

A lone [Witch] stood over the armored figure of Bouwen, still regal even in death.

“Much was lost, but she gained even more. She gained her name and power, and what’s more, she had the greatest warrior in the world. Possibly the greatest in a thousand years or longer. She had… his corpse, anyway.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” said Brin.

“And why would you?” asked Aberfa.

He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t, and kept smiling a hospitable little smile. Aberfa never smiled this much unless she was holding a dagger behind her back.

“She made him into an undead, didn’t she?”

She shook her head, looking pleased that he had drawn the obvious and incorrect conclusion. “No. His Class was too good. Any necromantic power laid upon his body would’ve been burned away by the authority that still rested upon him. No, nothing would do for this champion except an honorable burial.”

Brin sneered. “She just buried him? That’s it? You really want me to believe that she didn’t have a use for him?”

“Of course not. She had a use for him.”

The storybook vision faded away, and then they were back inside the fortress at Alhaedra, though Aberfa was still black like a living blotch of ink. Brin could see the massive gates behind him; they were in a great hall. A painting of the starry sky covered the ceiling with the constellations charted out. Tall braziers glowing with a violet flame dotted the space, and a gigantic mural of a dark-clad [Witch] with a bandage-wrapped face covered the floor. Probably Arcaena herself.

“What use did she have for his corpse?” Brin asked.

“First, understand that our bargain is complete. I have already told you information that would shake Frenaria, Olland, and Prinnash to their foundations if they knew. I will tell you the rest, as well. Before we get to that, did you ever wonder what Class I have picked out for you?”

Brin mulled over whether or not he would object to the change in subject. The Wyrd was telling him that she was right; she really had told him enough to consider her promise kept. He didn’t have grounds to object.

“What were you going to do to me?” asked Brin.

“Guess.”

“Something to do with Bouwen. You never told me how she killed him. I bet that’s a clue. You were going to turn me into a Class that can kill [Paladins].”

Aberfa raised her eyes in surprise. “What? No! Well, I suppose I can’t really say no, can I? But no. Try again. What would you have guessed before we came in here?”

“[Pet],” Brin decided. “You’ve been training me. Punishing me harshly for mistakes and rewarding good behavior. You want an obedient dog.”

“No,” said Aberfa. “I’m not against having [Pets], to be fair.”

A pathetic excuse for a human appeared on the floor in front of them. He was middle aged and balding, but every indication showed he had the mental age of a child. He crawled and cavorted happily around them both, his eyes vacant and dull.

“Have I shown you how to grant that Class? It isn’t just obedience training. You have to convince them, truly make them believe with all their heart, that they cannot survive without you. This is most easily done with the removal of the arms or legs.”

The man shifted into a young child and Aberfa stepped towards him with an angrily spinning buzz-saw.

“Stop! I don’t want to see this!”

“Why not? Some day you may find it necessary.”

“I won’t. I’m certain I won’t,” said Brin.

Aberfa’s inky face looked at him in contempt, her smile slipping for the first time. “Some day you’ll have children and you’ll understand. You’ll understand the need to turn your heart into steel to protect them, to give them the future they need, the future they deserve.”

Brin shook his head. “You’re sick.”

“I’m what I had to be to give you happiness. I’m the only creature in the world capable of giving you the right kind of life. No, Aberthol. I have uses for [Pets] but a son is not a pet.”

“Happiness? Torturing me for all those years was supposed to make me happy? If you wanted me to be happy, you could’ve let me stay home and be a [Glasser].”

Her black on black eyes flicked with red. “You never could’ve been a [Glasser]. You were made for greater things! You didn’t want to be normal. You knew you would be great!”

Brin sighed. “You never had any idea what I wanted. You never cared.”

“Wrong. I am your mother. I saw you take your first steps and I heard your first words. I heard your first breath and from that first breath I knew. I knew that you could never be like the other children. You were made for something more.”

“I never wanted to be some Arcaenean dark Class abomination,” said Brin.

“No. You’re right. You think I wanted you to be a [Scarred One]? It all would’ve been much simpler if that’s all I had in mind for you. But you didn’t want to be angry, unfeeling and cruel. You wanted to be good and kind.”

Brin shook his head, confused. This wasn’t where he thought this conversation was going.

The dark-colored Aberfa continued. “[Illusionist] was wrong, too. You’re not a deceiver. When you were young, you hated deception of any sort. You were good. Don’t you understand? You were kind and you defended the weak, even if it led to you getting hurt. Even if you suffered or were punished or mocked. You never lied to me, not until I taught you to. You were good, and Arcaena is not the place for good men.”

Brin was confused. All of this was wrong. “What are you saying?”

“You'll see. Let’s look at some more Classes. [Scab Eater], you know that one. [Blood Harvester], now this is interesting.”

Another boy, looking to be near his System Day, appeared on the mural of Arcaena, right below her collarbone. The boy was so covered in scars that Brin might’ve called him a [Scarred One] and he had tubes like catheters that carried his blood into bottles.

Aberfa grinned, showing black teeth. “Not the hardest Class to earn. The choice will appear when the subject starts to plan his day around the idea that his blood is meant for the nutrition of others. He will think about the best diet to provide the right vitamins, and plan his sleep schedule around it.”

“I don’t care. Stop it,” said Brin.

“Then there’s [Voice Hearer].” A girl appeared next to the boy, with spindly thin arms and legs and sunken eyes. “We produced her with a mix of sleep deprivation, isolation, and never-ceasing bright lights, and complete and utter silence. It didn’t take as long as you probably think. She is an excellent tool for surveillance.”

“Stop showing me this,” said Brin.

“[Broken Doll],” said the dark Aberfa. Another boy appeared on the ground in a nightdress, laying on his back unmoving. Aberfa picked him up and danced him around, a macabre imitation of a child playing with a toy. “These show up in the citizenry where you least expect it, but they’re very difficult to create intentionally. Torture, of course, but it can never be so bad as to drive them mad. Their suffering must be carefully curated over the course of years so as to completely rob them of all hope and will. They must especially lose their will to live.”

Brin closed his eyes and plugged his ears. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear–wait. That’s the one, isn’t it? That’s what you were going to do with me.”

He opened his eyes, and Aberfa was grinning at him.

He groaned in disbelief. “Why? What’s all that talk about me being happy if… if that’s what you wanted me to be?”

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Aberfa gestured at the boy, now limp where she’d dropped him. “These are the things I love the most. An empty doll, waiting for someone to snatch him up and breathe new purpose into him. He would do anything I wish, be anything I wish, and I would wish for him to be glorious.”

“That’s what you said about Ademsi…” Brin said. “Why–?”

“Come,” Aberfa whirled and started to walk across the hall. She didn’t head towards the stairs that Brin instinctually felt must lead higher into the citadel and towards Arcaena’s throne. She took a side door instead.

The environment blurred by, around corridors through doors, down stairs, down more and more stairs to a dungeon underneath.

They stopped in a dark and musty room, covered with cobwebs through the walls were of polished obsidian. The room was well lit with magical torches, but it was still dark because the walls, the furniture, and Aberfa herself were black. The only color and light at all were Brin himself and the [Broken Doll] laying on an altar.

No, there was something else, another penny-sized spot of grayish flesh on another altar.

“What’s that?”

“That’s him,” answered Aberfa. “A piece of him. Houwen’s Class remains with his flesh. In a costly and difficult ritual, Arcaena can suffuse the dead flesh into the broken doll, giving both a new life. This child, now empty and broken, is healed and made new. And made better.”

The lights went out, and when they returned, the [Broken Doll] was sitting up. He looked flush and healthy, though a little confused, holding his head and thinking hard. Brin [Inspected] him.

Paladin

“Imagine! Starting out with a Legendary Class! It would give you more than most people can gain in their entire lives! A hundred years might go in a nation with no one earning a Legendary Class, and you’ll start with it!”

“Oh,” said Brin. This was all too wrong, because that actually sounded like a good deal. He could practically hear the [Scarred One] saying in his mind Just hear me out.

“It would be fake. I’d be your slave,” said Brin.

“[Paladin] cannot be faked. I wouldn’t do all this just to make you into a puppet. You would forget everything, your name, your past, all the suffering you went through, any relation to Arcaena. You would be free! You would go out into the world and grow and laugh and right wrongs and do all the things you were always meant to do!”

Brin shook his head. “No. I don’t believe it. Why would Arcaena do this if she sees no benefit?”

Aberfa tapped her cheek. “She will retain the power to… switch you back. Once in a while, maybe only once a year or so, someone will find you and ask a few questions to the [Broken Doll]. Only to gather vital intelligence that will aid her in maintaining peace in the world. But you would not remember this, and you’ll continue afterwards as if it never happened. She would have no other power over you at all, this I swear.”

A spy. This was all an elaborate scheme to turn him into the perfect spy, one that didn’t even know he was a spy. But there was more, he could feel it. The Wyrd had brought them so close together that Brin could feel an omission like a thorn in his boot, and Aberfa was omitting something big.

“She wouldn’t have any other power over me, maybe. But you would. You said [Broken Dolls] aren’t exactly impossible to find. If you just wanted a spy, you could use any old [Broken Doll]. No, it needs to be a child of a [Witch], doesn’t it? This would only work if it’s a child of a [Witch] loyal to Arcaena.”

Aberfa winced, and sat down on the altar next to the newly formed [Paladin], putting an arm around his shoulders. He stared off into nothing, still looking dazed and confused. She said, “It’s nothing as insidious as you’re thinking. A [Paladin] truly must be free. Perhaps I will be able to slip a suggestion into your thoughts, now and again, urging you to focus on one target over another. You would still be combating evil. Many of Arcaena’s enemies are worse than she is.”

“Well, obviously this isn’t happening,” said Brin. “Your game is done. The only question I have left is, how could you do this? How could you torture your own son to the breaking point?”

The shadow Aberfa glared at him. “It was all for you. You will never understand the determination required to be a parent.”

“No, no, he’s right,” came Aberfa’s voice, now from behind him as well. She hugged him from behind and kissed his hair. From the arms wrapped around his stomach he could see that this Aberfa was in full color. This was… the real Aberfa? As real as anything got in here. [Know What’s Real] just told him this was all a dream and refused to get more specific than that.

“Get off me,” said Brin.

Aberfa hugged him tighter. “I could never have done this. I could never hurt you. My boy. My precious Aberthol. That’s why I made her. All the cruelty, it wasn’t me. It was my shadow.”

The shadow Aberfa in front of him grinned triumphantly.

“You’re sick.”

“Yes. Doing this to you has made my heart sick, but it was all for love. When I chose my monster form, I thought I could make it easier on you. I meant to break your spirit in your dreams, without ever touching a hair on your head. But [Know What’s Real] never let you fully believe the dream you were in. Now, we will need to do this in the waking world where it will work to your detriment. Most people under extreme pain will detach from reality. They convince themselves that the pain isn’t real. You will not be able to.”

Brin looked around the blackened chamber, at the shadow Aberfa and the [Paladin]. “So that’s really all this was for. You’ve been teaching me all this time knowing I’d forget every word, just to bond us more tightly together in the Wyrd.”

The real Aberfa spoke from behind him, not releasing her hold. “You will keep the knowledge but lose the memories. And is it so wrong that I wanted to have this time together? If we are to be apart, I needed this. I needed to memorize the sound of your laugh and the lines of your frown. I have treasured this time we had together. It pains me that you will forget it, but I will remember it forever. I will take solace in knowing that my sacrifice was worth it.

“Don’t you see? We can have everything. When I bring you to Arcaena she will return my humanity and my Class and you will be one of humanity’s greatest heroes. We can have it all! Do you think I could leave you as you are, remembering all the bad times, the pain and loneliness, the things I put you through? No, I could only bear to do this knowing that you would forget it all. For you, it will be as if it never happened. Your suffering will be brief, and then we will have everything. Please. I beg you to consider it.”

He did consider it; he couldn’t help it. A Legendary Class, the kind of Class he dreamed about after meeting Galan. A life completely different from Mark’s, and different than he was leading now.

The most attractive feature was knowing that he’d never regret it. Right now, knowing how much work he’d put into earning [Glassbound Illusionist] meant that it would kill him to give it up, but in Aberfa’s plan he’d never know what he’d lost. He wouldn’t be tormented by his memories of the things he’d lost from Mark’s life or the horrors of the undead siege. He’d start fresh, a true new start.

Sure, the part about torture breaking his mind was a drawback, but he wouldn’t remember that.

Once, he’d talked to a dentist about painkillers, and the dentist had gone into great detail about all the drawbacks of anesthesia. How it was addictive, imprecise, about the danger of giving too much or too little. He’d asked why they don’t just put the patients unconscious, and the dentist had explained that it wasn’t that easy. The difference between knocking someone out with drugs and outright killing them was a thinner line than most people thought.

Then the dentist had proposed something else. One drug to paralyze the patient, and another drug to block their brain’s ability to form new memories. The patient would feel all the pain of the surgery, trapped in their own body and unable to move, but when it was done they wouldn’t remember a thing and would imagine they’d been asleep the whole time.

Mark had said that he would never go to a dentist that did that, and the dentist had replied that he would never know if he had.

Now he was being asked to tackle that same moral quandary. Would it really be so bad to just give in? This was [Paladin] they were talking about. He’d lose his friends, but he’d never know it. Frankly, he’d been leading Myra, Zilly and Davi into all kinds of insane situations. They might be better off without him.

There. He’d considered the option in full, and the compulsion that the Wyrd had pressed into him faded.

Brin sighed and delicately removed Aberfa’s hands from around him, then turned to face her.

“Well, I’ve considered it and the answer is no,” said Brin.

Aberfa’s face fell. She cast her eyes to the ground and muttered, “Well, this is why we have parents. To make sure we do what’s best for us, even if we have to be dragged kicking and screaming.”

“I’ll take it from here,” said the shadow Aberfa, and the full-colored one faded away.

The altars and torches disappeared and the walls fell away, revealing an army of monsters, a mass of teeth and fur and claws as far as the eye could see. Shadow Aberfa floated above them like a malevolent spirit.

“I know this is a dream. It’s not going to work,” said Brin.

“Not now. But it will work to soften you up,” said Aberfa. “And don’t try to wake up. The time for allowing you to think that is a possibility is done. I’ve taken off the kid gloves.”

The monsters charged forwards, intent on ripping and tearing him to pieces.

“Then so will I,” said Brin.

He reached with his mind into a secret pocket bead of glass, and pulled out the memories he’d stored there. Inside, he found his best arguments.

He’d known the effect that calling Aberfa “mother” would have on him, so before he’d ever done it, he’d made sure to store every single argument against her that he could think of in a memory, to be used when he was ready to break free. Then he’d used every point of Mental Control he had to force himself to never think of it again until it was time.

He’d worried when he’d made these arguments that they wouldn’t still apply when the time came, but as he reviewed them, he found they were better than ever.

“Monster. You are not my mother,” said Brin.

Shadow Aberfa froze in the air, and the army of monsters recoiled.

“My name is Brin isu Yambul. Aberthol Beynon was a sad, pathetic little boy and he died. He’s gone and will never return. You are not the mother of my spirit. You are also not the mother of my body. The mother of my body was a living human woman named Aberfa. You are not that woman. You do not possess that body. You’re nothing but a monster.”

He felt the Wyrd shift, breaking down the oppressive structure that they’d been building these past months, undermining her authority over him.

“Silence!” Aberfa screamed. She urged her beasts onwards.

Brin summoned glass to form a wall of blades around himself. He didn’t use his magic, for once. Instead, he bent the dream to make the defenses appear. The first line of monsters impaled themselves on them.

“How?” Aberfa roared.

Brin held up a glass bottle, a replication of the one Sion had given him. “Potion of Lucid Dreams.”

“You think that can overpower me? I am a master of nightmares.”

Brin shrugged. “I didn’t need to overpower you. I just needed something for my arguments to grab hold of. Speaking of which, let me reiterate: You are not my mother. Even if you were, I would have no duty to listen to you. You are sadistic and cruel. You tortured Aberthol into such despair that he chose to end his own life rather than continue on. Any claims you had on him or me ended that day.”

Aberfa urged her monsters to greater fury, and they began to break down the defenses he built. “I am your mother. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. I am the one who nursed you, who taught you, who prepared you for life.”

A slashing claw, from a beast that looked like a giant praying mantis cut Brin through the stomach. He fixed it with a thought. “You are not. I already have a mother. Her name is Lumina.”

She appeared in a pillar of light, as if calling her name also created her namesake. The beasts in a ten foot circle burned to ash as a red-robed woman descended from heaven to lightly touch down on the earth so softly it was almost as if the very earth itself were rising up to kiss her feet instead.

Lumina peered around curiously from under her wide-brimmed red hat. “Well look at this! How curious! What a treat.”

“A useless gesture. She’s not real,” said Aberfa.

“And why should that matter?” asked Lumina. She flicked her wrist, a testing spell that shot forth a band of frost that carved a wide swath through the endless horde of monsters. “Oh! Very interesting. Brin, might I assume that we’re in your nightmares right now?”

“Yeah,” Brin said. “Can you help with this?”

“Of course.” Lumina raised her staff and began to go to work. She didn’t speak in the Language this time; Brin’s mind wasn’t large enough to replicate the power she could bring to bear with her words. Her presence here was more metaphorical, and because even in his dreams, neither he nor Aberfa could imagine her losing to anything.

A shattering wind dashed whole fields of monsters to pieces. Others were engulfed in a city-sized tsunami while others were buried in the fire of a falling sun. Lumina brought an apocalypse to bear in every direction of the dream.

He felt the dream start to collapse as Aberfa tried to shove him back awake. Lumina threw her staff, and it transformed into four gigantic chains, moving in directions that didn’t exist in three-dimensional reality. The chains had hooks on the end, and in a way that he could see but comprehend, they latched onto the ends of the dream and held it into place.

“How?” Aberfa gasped.

Lumina laughed. “What ever could you mean? My dearest beast, I am an [Archmage].”

“Wait. Lumina, are you really here?” asked Brin.

“A complex question. Suffice it to say that an [Archmage] must always be wherever she is,” said Lumina.

Aberfa fled, and Lumina followed.

Aberfa summoned back Alhaedra with its impregnable fortress, and Lumina smashed it to rubble.

Aberfa turned into a rainbow to flee at the speed of light, and Lumina arrived at her destination before she did. She smacked Aberfa with her staff, causing her to shriek in pain. All the while Brin followed along in the air, scarcely more than a ghost.

“Flee from me, beast. Run!” Lumina cheered.

Aberfa tried to bury herself in the earth, to launch herself into space or hide herself in the clouds. Lumina met her in each place, burning her with fire or scouring her with lightning.

Aberfa screamed in panic and lost her womanly form. Tentacles sprouted from her arms, and her body started to grow, her clothes melting into a monstrous form.

“No! Don’t look at me!” She cast herself into the sea, and Brin felt her trying to tear the dream to pieces, shredding it so that even Lumina’s chains couldn’t keep it together.

Brin found himself feeling real again, holding his spear on a beach. There were black obelisks dotting the water, but the fog meant he couldn’t see very far.

“No! Don’t look at it!” Aberfa screamed.

More monsters surged up from the surf, vicious-looking sea monsters. Lumina dispatched them with smaller, more concentrated strings of fire, and one even got close enough that Brin had to push it back with his spear.

“Almost there,” said Lumina. “Eyes open.”

She cast a bright explosion of fire into the sky, so bright it burned his eyes, but he forced them to stay open.

The mist retreated, and Brin saw more of those black obelisks… no, they were a rock formation. The foothills of gigantic rock walls. There was a city up above in the distance. He knew where this was. These were the famous black cliffs of Blackcliff.

“Do you have what you need?” Lumina asked.

The dream was collapsing all around them. It would be over in seconds, but it didn’t matter.

“I do. Thank you,” said Brin.

She gave him a half-hug, still holding the staff in her other hand. “See you soon. In the real world, next time, hm?”

Then it was over. He woke up and drew a deep breath into his nose, which was mostly blocked by his blanket.

“I have it! I know where Aberfa is!” Brin shouted. Or rather, he tried to. There was something in his mouth.

He’d been gagged. His hands were tied. There was a wagon on fire in his narrow field of view, under the blindfold over his eyes.

Bandits. The caravan was under attack, and he’d already been captured.

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