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

and a sudden soft pop. Goah’s Mercy! Edda cannot wake, nor become unconscious. She can only sustain pain in full awareness. And her heart…

“Redeemed van Dolah, you are at risk of termination. Do heed my advice.”

Ximena puts a hand on her chest, as she feels her heartbeat racing to the edge of cardiac arrest. But the slow, rhythmic beating under her fingers makes her realize that it’s just the psych-link’s mock, disturbing sense of Edda’s inners. Ximena watches Edda’s dislocated expression with increasing alarm. Goah, it’s killing her!

“I do fear that I might have overestimated the human capacity to sustain pain,” Rew says. “Thus, I am releasing control now.”

In an instant the dream shatters in a thousand pieces, and Edda wakes in her bedroom, pillow wet, weeping in horror.

“You did require a considerable time to dive, Redeemed van Dolah.” Rew is standing next to the white column embedded in Edda’s dream forest.

“Well, I’m sorry if I made you wait, Elder Rew.” Edda walks towards Rew and points a furious finger at her face. “I guess your live-dismembering was too distracting, yeah? Silly me.”

“Do not despair, Redeemed van Dolah. We shall practice until you fully master your pain control.”

Edda takes a step back. “Are you nuts?!” Her eyes have widened in, yes, fear. Fear of agony. “You almost killed me and now you want to do it again?”

“Indeed.”

“B- But what does this have to do with persuasion, Goah’s Mercy? Or even suggestion? I don’t need all this… fighter stuff, yeah? Make love and not war, yeah?”

“What you say is indeed correct, and yet a Walker must master dream violence to complete the Path of Light. It is the way of the marai. It is what has always been, and the ancestral Path is not to be distorted.”

“I don’t care about your goahdamn Path. Just teach me what I need to get my way, and I promise I will be a good soldier of your oh so grand plan to save humanity.”

“That is not possible, Redeemed van Dolah. I am to certify to Overseer Yog either your complete dominion over the Path of Light, or your failure. My Deviss Walkers are equally obliged to do likewise with their assigned human apprentices.”

“Come on, Elder Rew. All this…” she makes a grimace of pain while waving a hand indistinctively, “torture is so unnecessary. Why don’t you just tell everybody that I learned to fight, and we call it a day?”

“Alas, I do not lie, Redeemed van Dolah. I cannot lie, in fact. We marai cannot disguise facts, nor distort reason in that marvelous way you humans can. You must face the fact that the last trial is only to be attempted by Light-Walkers. And the fact remains that only a true Walker of the Light can tread the Path in the Shadow. It is the way of the marai. You must cross the Path of Light, Redeemed van Dolah, to reach the Shadow.”

“There must be something you can do, Goah’s Mercy! Are the others also training like this?!”

“How your fellow human candidates are being instructed is not your concern, nor mine.”

“But…” pearls of dream sweat are forming on her brow, “… I don’t think I can take that… horror again. I just can’t.”

“If that is your assessment, then I have indeed overestimated your skill. A regretful waste of my time. I bid you farewell, Redeemed van—”

“Wait!” Edda draws a deep breath, and then looks up into Rew’s blank eyes with pleading intensity. “At least tell me how I can resist the pain, yeah? I don’t think anybody can. At least no human.”

“That is where your mental discipline comes into play, Redeemed van Dolah. And the second truth of permascape violence.”

“The second… Yeah, right. The first truth was that stuff about inflicting and resisting pain to kick dream asses, yeah?”

“Indeed.”

“I don’t think inflicting pain is the problem. I can use,” she gestures at the white column and with a snap of her fingers the column shatters explosively, and scatters a myriad of marble shards across the forested floor, “willpower.”

“Indeed. You are powerful in the Third Step. It is the resistance to pain that appears more problematic.”

Edda presses her lips together. “Understatement of the century.”

“That is where the second truth of permascape violence may assist you, Redeemed van Dolah. If you do interiorize it.”

“Really?” Her eyes widen with hope. “Tell me.”

“It is a simple but deep truth. There is no physical pain in dreams, only mental. Pain in dreams is but a mirage of the mind. With enough discipline your mind can instinctively feel the difference and thus react differently. So can you avoid the natural stress that physical trauma entices.”

Edda stares to the distance and says nothing for a while.

A mirage of the mind.

Edda keeps gnawing on the concept, letting it seep slowly into herself, feeding on it. Pain is fake. Pain is your mind fooling yourself. “All right,” she finally says. “What can I do to get more discipline?”

“There is only one way, Redeemed van Dolah: practice.”

Practice. Ximena can feel gooseflesh crawling all over Edda’s skin. Memories of excruciating pain flash with sharp intensity across her mind, triggering a primitive instinct to flee. But, of course, if pain is a mock mental construct—a mirage of the mind—then the terror that is now taking hold of her is an irrational construct, a relic of the most primitive layers of her brain, an enemy to subjugate. Her rational mind recognizes its seductive delusion. The apparent safety of her mundane life is another mirage. If she gives in to her animal fears, her father will be soon gone forever, and that is the simple truth: that there is no true safety without power.

Edda shuts her eyes and presses her lips. “What are we waiting for?” she finally says, head sunk, and stretches both arms to the side.

“Do attack, Redeemed van Dolah.”

Edda is following Rew through the forest, running as if hunting a rabbit, jumping over bushes and rotten leaves. Rew keeps her distance