Kohl
“Benny… Where are your parents?” Mix asks, looking at the poor, disheveled kid. The worry on their face is made obvious by their knit together brows. Benny’s face shows no concern. He’s doing his best to show a brave face.
Mix is worried about this kid and I’m so confused about how someone could be in this place that I didn’t sense. And not just one child, but two. I’ve been here, slept here, and the fact that this kid was so close to us and we didn’t know. Makes me question a few things. The effect of my power hasn’t increased with the new DreamRunners, likely due to their low levels.
“Gone.” Benny says with a voice that seems untethered from this reality. This kid is suffering from shock. He has so many of the signs. He’s fully dissociating, and he doesn’t even notice his hands are shaking.
“Gone where, Benny?” Carter says, walking up to the boy. It’s kind of funny how much the siblings resemble one another. They convey worry the same way. He doesn’t fidget as much as Mix, though.
“It was only Mom for a while.” He says, looking in Carter’s direction and then up again at Mix. “She got taken.”
“Oh, you mean…” Mix gets out with some difficulty. “taken.” Anxiety curdles to horror on their face. Mix is still really haunted by the memory of their abduction. I don’t know how to help, but the chances of things going badly when they finally see the synchronauts could break them.
“Yeah.” He should sound sad. He should be heartbroken. Be crying for his mother. Of the million ways I think he should be dealing with what happened. The kid’s been through so much and it’s heartbreaking.
Sigh. I feel this all has gotten so far away from what we all wanted. This was supposed to be a simple exercise where we’d push everyone a little and hopefully level them up and maybe help Mix and me take out the boss so we can gain the harmonium for the staff. We now have to deal with a child in a war zone. I wonder if the others are okay. I hope their simple tasks were so easy that they are somewhere safe now.
The others noticed Benny talking to Mix and me and have come over. They surround the little guy. Emotions raging from curious to pity.
“I was taken too,” Mix squats in front of the kid with a big smile on his face. “but I got out. We’ll get her back.”
“Okay.” He said it as if I had told him that the weather forecast would be cloudy for the next two days. There are no ways about it; Benny is unsettling. “That isn’t really a big problem right now. My sister needs to be rescued.” The first emotion I’d seen flickers on his face. Worry.
“Did your sister get taken too?”
“No, she went to go swimming.”
I hear Mix’s thoughts while they put two and two together. “Oh…” Their jaw drops as the gears turn, realizing Anna is probably heading to the boss room.
I turn my head up, searching for Anna in the dungeon. I’m instantly buffeted by the disturbance of the bugs. They’re like static on old radios or TVs. Breaking through it takes only a heartbeat, but it’s ages in when you’re calibrating at the speed of thought.
“Alright, folks, we’ve got a situation!” Mix calls out to the others, clapping my hands to get their attention. “There’s a child in danger. We’re going to increase the pace by a lot.” They make eye contact with each of them as they talk. “Her name is Anna. She’s Benny’s sister. She went to the pool on the tenth floor, which wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem, but that’s where the boss is.”
Margarita raises her hand, and Mix points to her. “How is she going to get up there with all the bugs in the way?” I will admit. While that had made me wonder, I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t want the little guy to worry more. It also seems like a grim subject to bring up.
“We were here when they first moved in and made this place a dungeon. I taught her how to avoid the crabs.” Benny said calmy.
Her hand went up again and instead of waiting she asks “How?”
“I can see them all,” Benny said. “Like little stars in the night.”
No one knows what to say for a second. I think most of us are unsure of the mental state of this poor kid.
“You heard the kid, we don’t have a lot of time. What we do have, however, is firepower. We can make it through these floors, no problem. You have five more minutes and we’ll be on the move. We won’t slow down until we reach Anna and get her safe.
In that moment, Carter pulls him over to the side. Raising his hand above the wound, it begins breaking up the scar above the visor and knitting new skin in its place. Where the old skin went, I can honestly say I don’t want to know.
Suture
Ability Type: Life/Mancer/Healing
Dream Cost: 3
Level 1: Close wounds and heal the wounds on the surface. Cures Bleeds and Scar.
Requirement: Chirurgeon
I can see why Mix is made so uncomfortable by it. I shiver, shaking out my tail, hair standing on end. It’s like a car crash. I can’t seem to look away from the horror of it. Yeesh!
Mix sighs loud enough the others look over at us.
We stalk through people’s lives as we follow the winding paths found by Benny. His mother had been the super for the building. Each apartment had a maintenance hatch that led to a small room that connected the next few apartments. This was used so someone could monitor the amenities and service them on site. Benny’s mother, Rashida, had left her key card where her curious son had found it. Not believing he could get in any trouble with it being left out. Reminds me of myself stealing the keys to one of the family’s cars and going out for a joyride. The fact that I returned it with full gas didn’t really matter to my father.
I pretend not to see Margarita rescuing some coffee bags from the apartments we moved through. The food would be going to waste otherwise. Some still had plates of rotting food. With not even a fly to eat a dinner long left. A theory I’d come up with is that the Dungeons didn’t let any creature intend
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It’s like the worst kind of museum. A diorama to honor mundanity and i destruction. Time’s like this, I wonder how many of these same exhibits exist all over the world. Where the people who lived who’d made it still slave away in a place large enough to stable them. A testament to our living horror.
When we’re out there in the shopping complexes and the shops, we are just moving through the skeletons of our past. Easy to be wistful, but we aren’t confronted with the memories of what we’ve lost. These domiciles are fetid corpses of our lives. I can’t look upon them without feeling the true loss of the lives we used to live.
We could never get close to the little girl; she had a head start that we just couldn’t manage. We moved like wind anyway. I felt her and I tried to reach out to her but too many levels away. Instead of five floors between us, it was now three. Like trying to hold water; she slips between my fingers.
Realizing now how laughable the metaphor is now as I slink through the domiciles and through dimly lit corridors. I’m not human anymore. I don’t walk; I canter. I am not human, so why am I acting like one?
There’s a breath where multiple emotions cross their face. I know they want to go with me, but someone needs to make sure the others are safe. Losing this many DreamRunners would be catastrophic. At least if I go, they might have a chance with the Cyborg Paramours or maybe find another DreamCrafter.
Mix runs up the wall and creates a Passage, opening a portal in the ceiling. Lukaelin picks me up and jumps through in one fluid motion. He lets go, and we hit the ground running. Racing down the hallway as quick as my legs could take me. Something deep inside me seems to awaken as I finally let myself be what I am and not who I was. Whatever I am, I’m not human anymore. I don’t have to play by human rules. I have to stop hiding like tomorrow I’ll change back and be in my body in my bed again. I’m Kohl and I’m a DreamCrafter. This is my body.
Congratulations Kohl!
You have taken your first step on a long journey.
We fought them so long ago and we’re so proud of or you to take up the mantle.
Kohl, you are the first chosen to revive the Kilmari on Earth.
The first to bring our people back from extinction.
The walls of my mind become engraved with murals of a multitude of civilizations on a faraway desert planet. Called in every language, The Planet of Storms, the home of a few of the species I’d learned about when I got the powers I was given: The Grotec, Armored warriors who due to the inhospitable atmosphere, couldn’t survive without their war suits. The Al Duragh, the Dragons. Powerful leaders of The Dominance, the unseen enemy ready to kill us for our impudence. And now The Kilmari, the Sphinx, cultured mages and fighters organized in prides. Still warring against The Dominance, their enemy for centuries.
The Kilmari were beautiful. Seeing their lives and the culture, seeing how much it changed when those that traveled to Earth brought back here. How they loved the pictures drawn of them enjoyed basking on a much quieter planet’s atmosphere. The massive, winged felines rolled in the dunes and played in the rivers. Lions, tigers, panthers, and even some house cats; there were even some with the human faces that were more reminiscent of the ones that were shown in myths.
The Kilmari waged war over centuries, fighting for the less powerful denizens of the worlds they came across. Not understanding the aims of the enemy in time. They ultimately didn’t see the betrayal of the Grotec, who, until then, had sat on the sidelines during their long war.
A sense of belonging fills my body as I finally understand what all of this was for. Being reborn as a cat, feeling so helpless. Not anymore. I could fly soon! A Sphinx, I’m a Kilmari!
The daydream of flying around Electric City with Neon being free to spend time and just live… almost had me take a corner too sharp and faceplant. Thankfully, cat-like reflexes kept me from making a fool of myself. Almost. The giggle from Lukaelin tells me I’m not exactly smooth.
“Annie!” Lukaelin calls.
A little girl reaches her hands out for the 9th floor stairwell door. She freezes, turning her head, showing the unmistakable look of a kid caught in the act. She’s wearing pink shorts with flowers that have yellow petals and pink middles and a yellow t-shirt with the opposite pattern on it, an indigo towel over her arm and water wings already blown up and sitting right below her shoulders. “Stop right there!”
“Who’re you and who’s your kitty?” An indignant expression comes over her face as she folds her arms over her chest. “I don’t have to listen to you. I’m going swimming!” She doesn’t just say it. She screeches it, making it echo through the empty halls. I haven’t seen the giant crab that patrols this floor and I was very much hoping we wouldn’t have to deal with it.
“We’re friends of your brother,” Lukaelin says. “He’s Kohl, and everyone pretty much calls me Luka. We just want you to be safe.”
“That sounds like him… but you’re still a stranger. And you look like the devil. Mom says the devil is an evil man.”
Staying quiet even though I’m the only adult for 4 floors is taking it out of me. The two children are actually going to have it out in a life or death situation. I feel a headache coming on. Luka nods and he begins bargaining with the little girl and I sink into the fabric of the Dreamosphere.
Usually, in most places, it’s not as noisy and cluttered in the Dreamosphere. I can reach out farther and I can make a lot more sense of the world around me. Dungeons are weird places where the material world around us has taken a back seat. Physics still works more or less the same way, but creatures can solidify from nothing and disappear during the cleansing process. Even the unawakened feel odd in these places, even if they don’t know going in, they will when they cross over. I reach out to Benny. Getting her to come with us is taking some work.
His unnaturally calm voice enters my mind.
That perks my ears up. I knew there was a way we could talk to each other like phones, but the fact he could project his thoughts through me if I let him makes me wonder just what else they could do. Maybe it will help me use my powers differently.
“Benny?” she squeals. Definitely a headache.
Yeah, I need you to sit tight so we can have fun at the pool. Luka and Kohl are gonna make sure you’re safe.
“Okay, Benny! But you gotta promise!”
She giggles triumphantly, pumping her hands in the air, and that must have been the last straw. The sound of metal scraping against hardwood sounds as we all slowly look back the way we’d come. A six foot tall crab knight stands there looming in the darkness. It’s glowing eyes set to murder. I can already tell it’s even bigger than the last time Mix and the team fought it. Which gives me even worse ideas about what the real boss is going to have in store for everyone.
The pincer comes down like a hammer. I jump out to the side, bouncing off the wall. Crash! A crab jab smashes into the drywall, kicking up dust and debris. Pivoting in midair, I strike out with my back paws at its eye stalks. The bug flinches, giving me a moment to put some space between us. My bodyguard comes in with a drop kick. His hooves smashing into the Crab Knight mini boss’ chest, knocking it over. Its legs wriggle in the air, helpless. Rolling around like a bowl on the floor wavering from one end to the other, only flipping over with enough momentum. And it readies itself for another offensive. I gulp, not sure if I can get out of this unscathed.