Chương 439: (432) 6.46. Somber as Hell

Vin emerged to the sounds of deep, powerful gongs being rung somewhere in the distance, and he looked around, discovering he was in a large hallway. Based on the delicate carvings and fancy busts lining the wall, he could only assume he was still in the royal palace. A quick glance out one of the small windows was enough to make the blood drain from his face, as he found himself staring face-to-face at the largest thing he'd ever seen since the Worldeaters.

A monstrous kraken half the size of the entire city was floating over the palace, its dozens of tentacles reaching out and slamming down into the palace one after another. Every time one struck, a quake shook throughout the building as stone and sand was sent flying everywhere. The distant gongs continued all the while, and Vin started as he heard an equally distant voice.

"The evacuation has been completed, everyone is present and accounted for!"

"Are you kidding me?" he grumbled, wincing as one of the giant tentacles smashed down only a hundred or so feet away from him, sending a wave of pressure through the water of the hallway. While this dream was far deadlier than the last one, it was still simple enough to understand why it was a reoccurring nightmare. The palace had been evacuated in the face of an attack from an epic monster, and nobody had bothered stopping to check if Lumel had gotten out with the rest of them.

That woman is getting so many hugs after all this is over… Vin swam down the corridor as fast as he could with only one arm, poking his head into one room after another in search of the portal to the next dream. He realized almost immediately that each of the rooms he peered into were completely identical, as though Lumel hadn't actually known what the different rooms looked like and just assumed they were all the same.

That alone was a hint that he was going about this the wrong way, and Vin slowed in his frantic search, doing his best to ignore the screeching epic monster overhead as he thought. The portal would be something obvious… or at least not something located in some random room. Where would Lumel run to if an epic monster were attacking and she wanted to escape to safety? The first answer that came to mind wasn't really all that helpful. Lumel was a Dimensional Mage, and a damn good one.

If some powerful monster attacked and she'd been left all on her own, she'd just teleport herself to safety. Follow up question! Where would child Lumel run off to if an epic monster were attacking and she needed to escape to safety? Her bedroom? Vin felt like that was as decent of a guess as any, though there was the small issue in that he didn't have the faintest idea where Lumel's bedroom was located within the sprawling palace.

He and Lumel had chatted about the palace plenty, but she'd never done anything like draw a map for him. Maybe if he— A chunk of the palace wall only a few dozen feet away from Vin exploded as part of a giant tentacle blasted through it. With a curse, Vin reflexively cast Firm Water to form a weak barrier in front of him and block the shattered chunks of stone that had shot his way. As the stone bits slowed down and slowly drifted to the floor, Vin stared at his spell in shock.

He hadn't been able to cast magic during his own dream journey, but he'd long since linked his subconscious to his mana pool. If magic was still on the table… Turning around, Vin swam as fast as he could back the way he'd come, ignoring the ear-splitting screech from the epic monster. As he swam, he cast Sense Dream, hoping beyond hope his idea would work. Obviously, seeing as he was currently within a dream, his spell lit everything up like a Christmas tree. But that wasn't what he was hoping for.

Spotting the book drifting in the water where he'd left it, Vin swam up and grabbed it, casting Sense Dream on the book as well. Sure enough, the sensation he was getting from the portal leading to the other dream was slightly different, almost like a different flavor of dream, and Vin pumped his hand in excitement. With his magic available to him, he now had a decent way of detecting the portal from afar. The only problem was that his range was rather limited. Vin was already in a dream.

If he tried expanding the spell to cover a large area, the feedback would kill him instantly. He'd have to limit the spell to the point where his mind could handle the feedback, which meant he still had some searching to do ahead of him. Taking off down the hallway once more, Vin swam and cast Sense Dream at the same time. He quickly found he could expand the spell to about thirty feet in all directions, though anything more than that and he started getting a severe migraine.

That was more than enough distance, however, as it meant he no longer had to poke his head into every single door he passed. Shooting down one hallway after another, Vin's heart sank as he heard the gongs begin banging once more, as the distant voice called out a second time.

"The epic monster is descending upon the palace! The whole thing is going to be lost!" A quake more powerful than any other shook the palace, and Vin was actually sent tumbling through the water a few dozen feet before slamming hard into one of the walls. Shaking his head clear, he gritted his teeth, determined to ignore the monster for as long as he could. This was Lumel's nightmare, not his, and he wouldn't be stopped from reaching her by some giant squid.

This thing was nothing compared to the Worldeaters, and Vin kept repeating that to himself as he swam. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Suddenly, he felt a brush of another dream against the edges of his spell, and Vin jerked to a stop, turning and looking up at the ceiling. The portal was somewhere on the floor above him, which meant he would need to find a staircase in order to reach it. The good news was there was one just down the hall.

The bad news was that a long, powerful tentacle as wide as his whole body was smashing its way down the hallway toward him, banging against the walls and knocking delicate artwork to the ground as it went. It seemed this was the part of the nightmare where Lumel was forced to either try and evade the tentacle as she ran past it for the stairs, or turn and go in the other direction, getting farther and farther from safety as the tentacle chased after her.

"Yeah, no thanks," Vin muttered, swimming up to the top of the hallway and laying his hand against the cool stone." Stone Shape." Within seconds, a Vin-sized hole had been carved into the stone, and Vin swam up to the next level, finding himself within a surprisingly large room. Knowing how poorly she'd been treated by the queen and those around her, Vin had expected Lumel's bedroom to be little more than a spruced-up broom closet.

Instead, it looked like some sort of fancy hotel suite, complete with a large, four-poster bed and some familiar comfy chairs sitting off to the side that Lumel had stolen and placed in her Dimensional Pocket. As much as Vin wanted to take the time to look about the room Lumel had grown up in, the tentacle that he'd so cleverly evaded started forcing itself through the hole he'd formed in the floor, and Vin cursed as he narrowly ducked under the tip of it swinging for his head.

Realizing his time was up, Vin swam for the bed, diving into the glowing space underneath that felt like a different dream. After that, Vin went through a handful of dreams in fairly quick succession. Getting chased by the city guards after they'd realized he'd slipped past the city perimeter. Sneaking around what looked like the court mage's room as he hunted for forbidden magic. Even stealthily taking care of a pet clam at one point larger than he was, which had been a rather interesting one.

Not all of Lumel's dreams were of her life underwater, either. Vin found himself lost within the Underside, struggling to find a corridor that would lead him anywhere beyond the identical, giant rooms that the Underside was filled with. Chased by faceless golems with haunting blue eyes, a whole swarm of them crawling all over one another as he ran through the floating library.

Fighting back against another pulmon, an Airwalker by the looks of things, who had clearly been sent to bring Lumel back to her people for whatever reason. Thankfully, unlike during his own dream journey, Vin had full access to his magic this time around, as well as his new staff. Even if he was down his golem arm, he was more than capable of both defending himself and solving problems, and he quickly passed from one dream to another.

He sped through the layers of Lumel's subconscious far faster than he had his own dream journey, eager to reach her and help her out of whatever horrible dream she and Fria had gotten themselves trapped within. He was moving incredibly quickly… Right up until he popped into a dream focused around him. Vin looked around, surprised to find himself standing on the outskirts of Terra of all places.

Pretty much everyone he knew was milling about, talking quietly with one another and keeping their heads down as they moved. Shia was handing out flowers, her eyes red as Mary patted her on the back and whispered something to her that made the Druid sniffle and quietly start laughing. Scule was drunkenly stumbling off to the side, dragging an entire wine bottle around behind him as he started arguing with a small sapling someone had planted.

Reginald was supporting him with a tail, the rat crying as he gingerly walked with him. Alka was standing still as a statue away from everyone else, her glowing green eyes practically narrowed to pinpricks as her Slayers flowed around her, speaking softly and looking as though they were reassuring her as best they could. Even the council members were present, standing off to the side with Golrim and Myers amongst their midst.

They looked just as somber and heartbroken as everyone else, and it didn't take Vin very long to figure out why. Everyone was wearing black. And there was a large, closed coffin on the edge of the gathering with a big painting of his own smiling face hanging over it.

"Good, God…" Vin muttered, realizing he was attending his own funeral from Lumel's perspective. It seemed he wasn't the only one who had deep-seated fears about their relationship, though Lumel's went in a totally different direction. While he'd been a bit worried about commitment and taking that next step in their relationship, however many years down the line that may be… Lumel was terrified he'd end up dead.

"It's hard to believe he's gone, right?" Theodore asked, the Spy popping up out of nowhere and nearly giving Vin a heart attack. He went to berate the man out of habit, before catching his tongue at the last second. It seemed Lumel's dream-Theodore had been hit particularly hard by his death. His face was streaked with tears, and he was nursing what Vin doubted was his first drink in hand.

"I'm going… I'm going to miss him."

"Theodore…" Vin sighed, almost deciding to tell the man this was all just a dream before deciding against it. The last thing he needed was to witness how dream-Theodore would potentially react to learning he wasn't even real and that his existence would vanish in just a few seconds. But rather than head over to where he was already detecting the next portal, Vin hesitated. Clapping the Spy on the back, Vin gave him a small smile.

"If it helps, Vin told me you always brightened his day. He may have pretended to hate your stupid gags, but they somehow ended up being one of the main things he looked forward to whenever he came home. Those few times you were busy and he wasn't greeted by some brain surgeon giving out free samples, or an astronaut trying to hitch hike, just didn't feel right."

"Thank you… That means a lot," Theodore mumbled, sniffing before downing the entire drink in his hand and turning to go find more booze. Vin didn't miss how Theodore was muttering about that brain surgeon idea, and he rolled his eyes, glad to see even Lumel's dream version of the Spy had a rather one-track mind. Ignoring the handful of other people who tried to reach out to him, no doubt to reminisce about their time spent with the now dead-Vin, he stepped up to the coffin and frowned at Lumel's own subconscious.

He thought this was a bit harsh, even for a dream, but he wasn't the one who made the rules. He didn't know if this was Lumel's way of punishing herself, but seeing as she wasn't still here, she'd managed to get through this one way or another. With a deep breath, Vin yanked open his own coffin, thankful to find it empty of any corpses and instead filled with a chute that led straight down.

Giving the large gathering of people one last glance over his shoulder, Vin hopped inside, going ever deeper into Lumel's dream journey. With the sheer number of dreams he'd gone through at this point, he had a good feeling he was just about to catch up with her.