Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech by Isaac Petrov (drm ebook reader TXT) 📕

any Ximena has ever seen. High hills along both margins are barely visible in the distance, ruined castles crowning some peaks. The sun illuminates lazy currents from a spotless blue sky.

“So sexy!” Edda raises her arms. “Did I just nail the third step of your Path?”

Rew scans the placid waters for a few seconds. Ximena would bet she is impressed. “It might have been the fortune of the apprentice. Do return us to the forest.”

“The Forest. All right.” Without hesitation, Edda utters a curt cry of joy, and jumps headfirst into the water, splashing through the surface in an instant.

A surface that spins around itself in a confusion of gravity and water. Ximena feels almost dizzy by the sudden explosion of motion and perspective as her eyes try to adapt to the new narrative of the dream.

Edda emerges upwards, headfirst, from a small puddle in the same forest they left behind a few seconds ago. Her body moves as if pushed up in the air, and has just the right amount of side momentum to make her fall softly on the grass beside the original birch tree.

“There!” she says, visibly pleased with herself. “The forest. Do I kick dream ass or what?”

“Dream control is indeed in your nature, Redeemed van Dolah. As your Second Wake halo reveals.”

“Second what?”

“Matters not. Your dominion over the dream substance shall prove invaluable to exert suggestion.”

“Suggestion. Right.” She cuts a twig off a low branch and rubs it leisurely in her hands. “Is that what you did to Consul Levinsohn that first day, to make her nominate Lunteren for the Century Festival?”

“No, that was not suggestion, Redeemed van Dolah. That was persuasion. More powerful. It does require dominion over the Path in the Shadow. Should you ever reach such mastery, I am confident your natural talent for control shall make you a formidable persuader.”

“So what is suggestion good for?”

“The goal is indeed the same: to intrude into another’s mind in order to impose your will. But a Light Walker must rely only on the limited reach of willpower, and its cunning application by transforming the dreamer’s environment in the right way to achieve deception.”

“Deception.” Edda frowns. “Sounds… Not what a good person would do, Elder Rew.”

“Deception is the lightest application of power over others.”

“There’s also asking.”

“That is not power. That is mercy.”

“All right. Got it. Can you show me how to,” she wiggles her fingers in the air, “use this dream magic to do suggestion?”

“I do fear I cannot, Redeemed van Dolah. No marai can. As human, you are better suited to design your own means of deception on other humans than a marai can ever be. And you shall—suggestion is the core of the last trial that awaits you and your fellow human candidates at the end of the Path of Light. Suggestion will determine which two humans are selected to be instructed in the Path in the Shadow.”

“But then…” Edda’s voice hesitates slightly. Ximena can feel the hint of anxiety growing inside her. Now, suddenly, suggestion is the key to saving her father, if only because it is the key to persuasion. “How can I learn?!”

“You have already displayed a degree of proficiency, Redeemed van Dolah.”

“What?”

“With Consul Levinsohn indeed. I did persuade her to move the Festival to your Geldershire, as a demonstration to you humans of the potency of persuasion. And yet it was you that convinced her to select your own colony by the cunning application of words, seduction and sex. That was most impressive.”

Edda blushes. “But I didn’t use…” She wiggles her fingers again.

“By merely using your own self, you did achieve your objective with the consul, Redeemed van Dolah. Thus, what could you achieve now that you also master the manipulation of the dream world?”

“So you think I’m ready for the last trial?”

“You are. But you have not completed your instruction yet.”

“Haven’t I?” She turns her attention to the birch, snaps a finger at it, and the birch turns into a white marble column that would not look out of place in a temple of the classical world. “I think I’m pretty good already.”

“Manipulation you indeed command. Alas, there is also struggle and pain at the end of the Path of Light.”

“Struggle—?”

Rew closes on Edda and thrusts her arm through her chest like a spear. “And pain,” she says.

Ximena feels a spike of astonished agony for the briefest of moments before Edda wakes up gasping in her bedroom.

END OF DREAMWORMS EPISODE II

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Nineteen

The Teacher and the Quaestor

“I am exceedingly sorry for the delay,” the man says, as he paces down the central steps of the amphitheater, moving with an ease that comes naturally to people of privilege. He is over fifty, head shaved clean except for a large eye symbol tattooed on his forehead, and wears a humble brown gown with that same eye symbol threaded in gold on his chest. “But I had an urgent council duty to conclude. Please accept my most sincere apologies, my dear professor.”

“Grand Censor Smith,” Miyagi says from the stage below, and gestures Ank to stop the floating scene, which vanishes in the sudden radiance of a midday sun and a clear blue sky. “So glad you could make it. Please take a seat.” He points at an empty spot next to Ank. “We were about to—”

“Splendid, splendid,” he says, eyeing the elegantly dressed Neanderthal woman, who is smiling openly at him. “Oh.” The corner of his lips twitch almost unnoticeably, and then he