Explorer of Edregon

While dream-Lumel crouched before him, seemingly frozen as she waited for his answer, Fred flew down and raised an eyebrow as he looked between the two of them. “Uh, Vin? You alright? You look like you’re freaking out. I figured this ‘getting married’ thing was kind of like what bonding is for fairies. Isn’t it a good thing?”

“I… I might have some personal issues when it comes to the concept of marriage,” Vin admitted slowly, willing his heart to stop slamming into his ribcage. “I’d always thought my parents should have just gotten a divorce with how often they fought, and the idea of being legally tied down to someone is sort of terrifying. What if the person I were to marry suddenly changed and decided they wanted to settle down and live in the same small town for the rest of their lives? I can’t live like that!”

“Calm down, dude, this is all just a dream,” Fred said, holding out his hands placatingly. “None of this is real. Though you should probably talk about all this with your girlfriend at some point, if I’m being honest. Bonding, or marriage, in this case, is supposed to be a beautiful thing!”

“Then why are you so against Scule and Fria seeing each other in their dreams?” Vin asked, eager to divert the conversation away from his own issues. There was nothing at all wrong with never wanting to get married, he knew that for a fact. Back on Earth, he’d met plenty of happy wanderers during his travels who were together with one another without ever having gotten married. But the fact that the thought of getting married himself nearly drove him to a panic attack showed that he definitely had some things he needed to work through.

“She’s my twin sister,” Fred sighed, drooping a bit in the air. “She’s had a few rough relationships with other pixies in the past, and I just don’t want to see her get hurt again. The problem is, she loves love, if you know what I mean. Connecting with others and trying to figure out if they’re the one she wants to bond with. Of course I’ve gotten a bit overprotective after watching her be disappointed time and time again.”

“I get that… but Scule isn’t those other guys,” Vin argued. “I won’t lie and say he’s some sort of saint, because he’s a Rogue for crying out loud with a lot of what I would consider bad habits. But he’s loyal and reliable, and one of the best friends I could have ever asked for. Honestly, you should have a chat with Reginald sometime and ask him for his thoughts, seeing as they’ve been together for years. Actually, can you visit the dreams of an animal?”

“He was marked by the mushroom just as you all were, so as long as he’s sentient, yeah, I can,” Fred nodded, scratching his chin. “That’s actually a good idea. His bonded companion should give me an excellent look into who he is as a person.”

“Glad I could help,” Vin said, giving him a pained smile. “Now, can you help me look for a door or something?”

“I already told you, I can’t see the portals before you do,” Fred said, crossing his arms. “And you know as well as I do you can’t progress through this dream without facing it. She’s waiting for you to say something to her.”

Sure enough, Lumel was still frozen, looking up at him with that excited and nervous smile on her face as she held out the ring.

“Even knowing this is a dream… saying ‘yes’ freaks me the hell out,” Vin admitted, a part of him hating himself for even saying it out loud. “Lumel is amazing, and I’m beyond lucky to have her in my life. But marriage? We’ve only known each other for a few months! That’s crazy! My parents knew each other for years before they got married, and they ended up hating each other!”

“Again, this is a dream,” Fred reminded him, rolling his eyes. “Also, you literally just said it yourself. Scule isn’t like any of the other people Fria tried dating, right? Well, you and Lumel aren’t your parents. You can’t let their terrible marriage poison your own future.”

Vin knew he was right, but there was a big difference between logically understanding something and emotionally accepting it. Fifteen years of his life he’d spent under the same roof as his parents, watching them fight and listening to their late-night arguments. The two hadn’t even seemed to like each other, much less love one another. Half the reason he’d originally run away was because he figured they were only forcing themselves to tough it out because of him.

Taking a deep breath, Vin looked down at dream-Lumel, trying to look past the white veil on her face or the ring in her hand. Marriage had somehow become such a horrifying concept in his mind after all those years, but if he looked past that…

Boiling the question down to its essence, here was a girl he enjoyed spending time with and had strong feelings for, asking him if he wanted to spend even more time with her. Honestly, the answer was obvious.

Slowly, he reached out, plucking the shining, golden ring from the box in Lumel’s hand. Lumel waited, watching him with shimmering eyes as he smiled.

“Thank you, Lumel,” he said, placing the ring on his finger. “I—”

The moment the ring slid onto his finger, Vin’s entire body was somehow sucked through the ring, and he landed hard on his back in an empty room. Groaning, he spotted Fred as the pixie appeared overhead.

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“Hah, the ring was the portal the whole time! Told you, you can never tell with dreams.”

“Alright, I think I’ve had enough fun for one dream journey,” Vin admitted, rubbing his backside as he got up. “Let’s just focus on making it down to the bottom.”

After that, Vin and Fred traveled from dream to dream, always hunting for the portals that would bring them down to the next layer. Sometimes he had to fulfil certain criteria, like with his dream with Lumel or fighting Alice’s trap-champion. Other times he simply had to find the door, like up in the forest or during the battle for wave six. Each dream was different and filled with crazy events that would never happen in real life, and Vin lost track of how many they’d gone through after a while.

Defeating the divine warrior in an arm-wrestling competition with the grand door to the floating library as the prize. Fighting off a small army of dwarves as he raced to try and make it to the dungeon entrance before lava could overtake him. Sifting through the crystal desert for a trapdoor as the blue fur clan battled against an overwhelming swarm of monsters and the neilans laughed from the clouds up above.

That said, like his strange conversation with Reginald, not all of the dreams were bad or dangerous.

He presented Erik with a powerful artifact, saving all the dryads from their slumber and being welcomed into the door at the foot of the Tree of Ancients. The elder of Sakis gifted him her cane as a thank you for saving her village from an epic monster, pointing him toward a door that required the cane to open as a key. He even had a dream where he somehow managed to convince the guards manning the citadel’s outer wall to open the gate for him, which immediately sucked him into the next dream as he walked through.

By the time they ended up in a vast, familiar void of darkness, Vin was utterly worn out from all the dream hopping. Pausing to catch his breath from the previous dream where he’d been chased by the Red Dawn until he’d managed to find the bird cage Scule had been trapped within and leap through the tiny door, he couldn’t help but ask. “How long… do you think it’s been?”

“Hard to say,” Fred admitted. “You made pretty good time though! My gut says somewhere around a week. No more than a week and a half at max.”

“So this is it?” Vin asked, looking around at the darkness that could only be his own core. Stretching out his senses, he could just barely feel the mana drifting all around them. Normally, in Introspection, shifting around his mana was as easy as thinking. Yet here, he felt like he was trying to pick up grains of sand with his mind.

“Yep, this is definitely your personal mana,” Fred nodded, glancing around and letting out a small whistle. “Not a bad mana pool you’ve got here.”

“So what now? We finished the dream journey, right? Please tell me we don’t need to backtrack and go through all those dreams again.”

“No, once you manage to find your mana pool, getting out is much easier than getting in,” Fred laughed. “All you need to do now is practice shifting your mana around in here for a bit. Once you master the two building blocks for dream magic within an actual dream, your body will be prepped to continue without my assistance.”

“How am I supposed to learn a spell in here?” Vin asked, puffing as he just barely managed to will a few strands of mana into something vaguely resembling a rune. “My own mana isn’t listening to me!”

“Of course not, you’re sleeping right now,” Fred snorted. “That’s why we’re doing all this in the first place. Now that you’ve finally reached your core, you can work on overcoming this natural defense mechanism that prevents mages from blowing themselves up in their sleep. It’ll take a few days, so you might as well get started.”

Groaning, Vin did just that, taking a seat as Fred flew back and forth, drawing out the runic formation for Sense Dream. They were still on a time crunch after all, so there was no point in drawing it out.

Just as Fred promised, maneuvering his mana within his own dream gradually became easier as he continued to practice. He felt like a master seamstress struggling to thread a needle with frostbitten fingers, but he continued to put in the effort, and his hard work paid off. It took him far longer than he felt it should have, but eventually, he learned the tier 0 spell Sense Dream.

Create Dream was a bit harder.

The tier 1 spell was complicated enough that he couldn’t help but create a few backlashes as he struggled to recreate it with his weakened mana control, and every time one occurred, he was yanked from his mana pool back into a new dream, where he had to find a portal back to his core. It was exhausting, and more than a little frustrating, but after needlessly finding his way out of seven additional dreams, he pulled it off.

“Yes!” he laughed, looking at the glowing and stable structure for Create Dream that he’d finally managed to put together. “I did it!”

“I want to say it took you long enough, but honestly, you finished sooner than I expected,” Fred said, flitting about the runic formation and nodding his approval. “Congratulations. You can officially call yourself a dream mage. So long as you don’t mind getting laughed at by a few hundred pixies if they ever overhear you.”

“I don’t mind,” he grinned, just eager to return to the waking world. “What now? How do we get out?”

“How do you think?” Fred asked, pointing at the glowing runic formation. “You’ve got the tools. Craft us an exit out of here.”

Blinking at the realization that he was right, Vin chuckled, focusing on his newest spell and closing his eyes. Dream magic was a lot more about feeling than most magic was, as the rune for 'dream' was almost entirely up to the caster’s interpretation. Putting together what he wanted in his mind, Vin opened his eyes, pleased to find himself in his parents’ old home, with a ratty school backpack on his back filled with a single change of clothes and his few belongings. He was standing directly before the front door, and he could vaguely make out the distant sounds of his parents arguing somewhere upstairs.

“Seriously? Bit of a depressing choice, don’t you think?” Fred asked, peering curiously at the vacuum cleaner leaning against the front wall.

“Not at all,” Vin laughed, his chest filling with excitement as he grabbed the front door and pulled it open, smiling at the wall of white light that stood before him. “Edregon is amazing, but it’s not the beginning. Not really. This was the day I first became an explorer.”