Aelia rubbed her bleary eyes. Even the chill wind of a spring night wasn’t enough to keep her alert anymore. Morning would come all too soon. At least when the gathering began tomorrow, she could confidently report that Governor Iraias’ would-be murderer was already caught. That trouble, at least, could be set aside. The rest of the gathering’s troubles would be enough on their own. She had a few hours of fitful sleep ahead of her, if the gods were kind.

  Esharah emerged from the citadel, still looking troubled. “They are...recording Nadyar Velian’s confession.”

  Aelia shook her head. She’d not known the fourth-circle well. Like most vis in Northstar (save, for whatever reason, Vestra vis Nightblood), he’d largely ignored her. A rising star, youngest of Governor Iraias’ fourth-circle enforcers. Now a traitor. How long had Nadyar Velian plotted against the governor? How long had he waited, ready to stab his benefactor in the back?

  Just as the prisoner Iskir had stabbed Captain Wulfred Frostclaw. Did power inevitably bring those threats with it?

  “I am grateful that I can trust you,” Aelia said.

  Esharah started, gaze questioning. Her mental touch brushed against Aelia, trying to interpret the statement.

  “Ah.” Aelia grimaced, rubbing her eyes again. “Forgive me. I am...quite tired. Just thinking about how horrifying it is to be betrayed by someone trusted. I am grateful to have you by my side.”

  Esharah said nothing. Her mind pulsed with regret. With a dark guilt that Aelia couldn’t begin to imagine the source of. Only a momentary flash before it was hidden away.

  “We should go,” Esharah finally said when another blast of chilly night air cut across the courtyard.

  This late, Northstar was quiet. Soon, there would no doubt be a renewed bustle of activity as guards went to arrest whatever co-conspirators Nadyar Velian confessed. For now, there was only the wind. The two walked in silence through the empty streets.

  Not as empty as Aelia had thought. There was a single figure running from the sidestreet. Where the other guesthouses were located.

  Esharah stiffened and shoved Aelia back, hand flashing to the arcsteel baton at her hip. “Who’s there!?” Esharah shouted into the darkness.

  The runner slowed. A tall man.

  When he stepped forward, Aelia recognized Legatus Ellis Tovran. Bodyguard to Ambassador Rosval.

  “Legatus,” Esharah greeted cautiously, the hand on Aelia’s shoulder steering her back, further on the road to the guesthouse. “Shouldn’t you be protecting your ambassador?”

  Legatus Tovran raised a sword. Even in the dark, Aelia saw blood staining the tip of the two-foot-long blade.

  “Where is the voidtouched?” Captain Tovran demanded. A man whose discipline had seemed absolute at the gathering now looked on the verge of panic. Or something else. Something wild.

  “Aven remains under guard-” Aelia began.

  “Lies!” Legatus Tovran barked. He stepped closer. “I watched the monster murder Ambassador Rosval! Where is he?!”

  Aelia froze, breath catching. That was impossible. Absurd. Still, the image of how terrifying Aven had looked when charging Hanion vis Dreamweaver flashed in her head. Just a second before she realized this must be an illusion. It had to be.

  “Your mind has been affected.” Esharah pressed Aelia back further. “Hanion vis Dreamweaver has placed your mind under-”

  “Don’t you dare touch my mind!” Legatus Tovran roared. “I saw the voidtouched kill the ambassador with these very eyes. You...you’ve plotted all of this! Your voidtouched murdered the governor, now the ambassador! All under your orders!”

  “Aelia, run,” Esharah’s voice reached into Aelia’s mind.

  She tried. Her legs wouldn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the drawn, bloody blade.

  A faint glint of moonlight flashed on the arcsteel baton at Esharah’s hip.

  “Drop the weapon, Mindspeaker,” Captain Tovran demanded. “Or I will be forced to strike you down as a traitor to the empire.”

  Aelia tried again. She only stumbled back. She couldn’t breathe.

  Esharah shot Aelia a worried glance and moved in front of her. “You have no authority in Northstar, legate. If you attack, I will defend myself and my executor. You will be the one held accountable for your crimes.”

  Through their connection, Aelia saw the truth. Esharah knew just as well as Aelia did that she stood no chance. Not against a fourth-circle soldier. Esharah had no combat vis. Her only weapons were mental. And the legate was ready to kill anyone who came close to his mind.

  The warning fell on closed ears. Legatus Tovran’s eyes hardened. He lunged.

  * * *

  Four Avens fought and died again. Every time he tried to draw back together, a new phantom appeared. Sergrud fel-Maies. Vestra vis Nightblood. Father. Hanion. Voidspawn. Every enemy he’d ever known, and many he’d only dreamed. He tried to hold on to a single thought, a single anchor, but it was torn away each time a new phantom of death descended.

  Twice he’d escaped the phantoms, one of the minds breaking free and rising out of sleep. Only to find themselves within another dream. Each death was as real as the last, each as painful. The void inside him, the same void he’d learned to command and control, raged. Lashed out. But it fought phantoms, and each imagined battle only shredded the fragile bonds between the split pieces of his mind.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Sergrud appeared, laughing with spear drawn. Aven stabbed out, stretching his voidclaw further than ever before. He wasn’t a lowly second-circle anymore. He could fight Sergrud on equal terms. Keep out of his range, strike harder than before-

  Killing the phantom brought no release. Even as the almost-real feeling of his voidclaw piercing Sergrud’s neck flashed in his mind, another phantom formed in its place.

  Another piece fell. Into the voidpit again. Disintegrating in the blackness. No goddess appeared to save him this time. Nothing but darkness poured in.

  He tried breaking off another piece. A small sliver that could at least flee the deadly phantoms. The connection snapped almost immediately, swallowed by the void raging inside. Another piece gone.

  He was dying a dozen deaths at once. He tried fighting them all and failed. He tried running and failed. So many deaths.

  Let it end, a treacherous part of his mind whispered. Just let it stop. Somehow. Even if it means giving up.

  There was nothing Aven could do. Death waited at every turn. All that was left was dying alone in this dream-

  Alone.

  A manic pulse flashed in his mind. A glimmer of something like hope.

  Aven laughed when Vestra’s wings pierced his neck.

  “We both know,” Aven gasped out, even if Hanion was no longer around to hear, “that I’m not alone in here.”

  If Hanion could turn all Aven’s imagined enemies against him, why couldn’t Aven’s allies respond?

  When a phantom Erdrak burst in, rushing towards Aven with halberd raised, a phantom Logash smashed into him from the side.

  “You spend far too long inside your own head.” Not-Logash offered a hand to the piece of Aven’s mind that thought it was lying on the cold stone of Hellfrost’s courtyard. “We’ve been fighting your monsters since the beginning.”

  Another phantom father appeared, sword drawn and eyes hard. “Aven is the monster.”

  Not-Tanya leaped from Not-Logash’s shoulder to smash Father’s face with a frying pan. “You ought to be ashamed to talk of your own son that way! After what you did to him!” She turned back to Not-Logash, “Hold me up, dear, so I can give this hypocrite’s face another good smack.”

  Even under Hanion’s illusion, Aven’s mind apparently had no frame of reference for Father being whacked by a three-foot-high woman wearing an apron. Father’s phantom collapsed, driven by absurdity to nothingness.

  Aven still fell in the void. Still alone in the darkness. Alone, where no one else could reach.

  But Aven knew someone with a talent for being where they weren’t supposed to.

  A single plucked note of a lute rang through the emptiness. Sunshine popped into being beside the fragment of Aven that was dying in the void. Wearing a grin as wide as the sky. Sunshine’s presence brought no weapons. No fighting prowess. Only a brightness that seemed to make the void around them less oppressive.

  “This is a terrible place you’ve gotten yourself into,” Sunshine said conversationally. “And here I am with no gifts to help. Not even a song. You’ve a terrible mind for music, see, and I’m just an echo of your thoughts talking back to you. I’d probably just shatter the void with an awful tune.”

  The void within that mind-fragment roiled. Hunger gnawed. Despair sank its teeth into him.

  “Still,” Sunshine said with a grin that didn’t falter. “Perhaps if you’re lucky, something might find you in the dark.”

  The lute thrummed again, and a chain dropped out of nowhere. Connected to nothing. But held by friends. Aven seized the chain and yanked it twice. An instant later, the chain pulled, and Aven rose out of the void.

  Vestra vis Nightblood seized Aven by the neck.

  “Your blood is all over my boots,” the phantom hissed. “I told you what would happen if you dirtied them again.”

  She hurled him to the stone floor of Hellfrost Keep. He didn’t even have time to roll away before her boot slammed onto his face.

  “Stop!”

  Aven’s heart soared as Esharah and Aelia appeared in the vision on either side of him. Vestra reeled back, hand clutched to her temple and eyes locked with Esharah.

  “You will back away from Aven this instant!” Not-Aelia declared. “And then you will apologize for being a horrible sister and a horrible friend.”

  The phantom Vestra retreated, vanishing into the darker corners of Aven’s mind.

  Aven rose and looked upon the imagined face of Aelia. “I’d kiss you if you were real.”

  “Then you should wake up so you can do so quickly,” Not-Aelia replied. “I have been languishing heartbroken without your touch.”

  Not-Esharah snorted, “Ugh. Surely even your mind isn’t delusional enough to believe that’s what Aelia would actually say.”

  “A man can dream,” Aven replied. Even if dreaming was what got Aven into this mess in the first place. “I don’t know how to wake up.”

  Not-Esharah considered, “I think...you can’t.”

  “Helpful,” Aven said. “Truly.”

  “No, I mean you can’t fight your way out.” Not-Esharah gestured to the phantoms of Logash and Tanya beating back a monstrous voidspawn that had appeared. The entire Hellfrost Legion joined in soon afterwards. “Every piece of your mind fighting is only tearing itself apart.”

  “Then what in the hells am I supposed to do?” Aven asked. He gestured to the death all around them. “Do you have a plan for winning an unwinnable battle?” He asked the question of Not-Esharah, but the real question was for Hanion vis Dreamweaver, whose taunting whispers still echoed through every corner of the dying dream.

  “You can’t kill your way out, and you can’t fight your way out,” Not-Esharah mused. “Because none of the enemies are real. It’s all just in your head. You need to focus on something real.”

  Difficult when the not-real things were so attention grabbing. He needed something to focus on in the real world. Something that would overpower the dreams...

  A faint flicker reached his mind. The barest echo of a touch. The sound of a shout that could have been miles away.

  Esharah’s voice. Not the false Esharah of his dreams. The real one. Pulsing a signal without words.

  A cry for help.

  Every piece of Aven’s shattered mind focused on that cry.

  The conclusion formed. Hanion wanted the gathering to end in failure. He targeted Governor Iraias and Mother as leaders of the gathering. But Aelia was a leader too. She was the one who brought Mother and Iraias together. She was the strongest advocate here for united action against the voidspawn.

  To destroy the gathering, Hanion vis Dreamweaver needed to kill Executor Aelia Etrani.

  Four pieces of Aven’s mind reached that conclusion. All four pieces called to the void. The void wanted to rage. Wanted to lash out. To destroy. To consume anything around him in its violence. With nothing else to destroy, the void had tried to destroy Aven.

  Now, he had something else to destroy.

  The void rose. The dream shattered.

  * * *

  Aven jerked awake, gasping for breath. His mind swam. His head throbbed. It felt as if he’d been drowning and just breached the surface. His thoughts came back in pieces, some missing entirely, like teeth knocked loose by a hard blow. The pain was a good sign. Pain meant he was alive. The taste of iron filled his mouth, and when he reached up to wipe his face, his fingers came away bloody from his lips.

  From the burning in his lungs and the throbbing in his skull, he hadn’t been breathing for a long while in the dream. If it had gone on much longer...

  That wasn’t relevant, because he’d broken out of the dream now. In theory. Part of him still wondered if this was but another dream...

  Aven shook off the feeling of surreality and staggered out of the bed. Silence reigned. Mind still whirling, he stumbled over to the door and banged a fist against it.

  “Guards!” Aven shouted.

  No answer came. When Aven strained his ears, he heard a snore.

  The window was barred. He felt the lock on the door. Arcsteel, just like the locks on the cells at Hellfrost. Steel that nullified vis, steel that burned when he touched it with the void. Aven almost felt nostalgia at how it burned when he threaded void into the mechanism to loose the bolt. That pain was nothing to what he’d experienced in his own head.

  In the distance, another pulsing cry for help brushed his mind. Not directed towards him. It was too faint for that. Still, he had a direction. He didn’t need a mind domain to know which way the scream had come from. North, towards the citadel.

  The void rose up again. It wanted to destroy. If anyone had hurt Esharah or Aelia, then Aven would destroy.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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