The Endless Waking Dream
“Who put you up to it?”
Merida asked, reloading her Sleep. At the sight of the curse blooming at her fingertips, Mird gasped and thrashed in her restraints.
“I-I really don't know anything!”
“Answer.”
“Wait, you're—you're torturing me right now? In the middle of Ivory Tower territory, of all places? You two are actually insane, you know that?!”
she shrieked through gritted teeth.
“If the Tower Master finds out about this, it'll be war—!”
Merida cast Sleep again, and Mird's words died in her throat.
Watching her writhe in agony even in her sleep, Merida's expression didn't change in the slightest. Her eyes were those of someone regarding a passing insect.
Snap!
At the crack of her fingers, Mird, who had been twisting as if in a seizure, finally slumped back against the floor. Ragged breaths came rasping out of her.
“Talk.”
“Go to hell, you—!”
Mird's body shot upward without delay. Simon, who had been watching, spoke up in alarm.
“Hold on, Merida! Isn't this going too far?”
“We.”
Merida lifted her head to look at him.
“We almost died just now.”
“……”
Simon had a trick up his sleeve he trusted, but in that moment when the massive train had come bearing down on them, Merida must have felt the fear of death in earnest.
She said so.
That they couldn't carry out the mission like this. That since lives were on the line, she would absolutely find the mastermind first.
So she kept releasing Mird's Sleep and casting it again, over and over.
“Yeurgh!”
Thud.
“Stahp!”
Thud.
“I mean ihd!”
Thud.
At this rate, Mird's mind would break. Unable to watch any longer, Simon grabbed Merida by the shoulders.
“That's enough. That's an order, as Student Council President.”
“……”
Her fingers went still. Then she stared at him flatly, eyes asking: And why are you stopping me?
“What kind of horrible nightmare are you even showing her?”
“It's not horrible. Phantasos-Style Sleep can't show nightmares in the first place.”
Merida said, lowering her hand.
“Then what is it?”
“Just herself.”
Merida said.
“Mird falling asleep, and then waking up in front of us. She keeps dreaming that exact dream, over and over.”
He understood now.
Reality confusion.
Mird knew that 'Sleep' had been cast on her. Whatever she saw in her dream, she might manage to endure it if she could tell herself that it was a curse, an artificial nightmare.
But Merida's method was different. She was forcing Mird to repeat, infinitely, the 'dream of falling asleep and waking up'—just like the one she'd just experienced.
Now it's real for sure, Mird would think as she woke—only to realize that even the act of waking had been part of the dream.
Then, certain that this time was truly reality, she'd wake again—and that too was a dream.
She dreamed the dream of waking from a dream, again and again.
Hoping, being trampled, and daring to hope once more, in endless rotation.
A hell from which she would never wake.
Mird must have felt as though she'd slept and risen tens of thousands of times.
In the dream, she screamed.
Stop it, please.
Make it stop.
But no matter how desperately she begged, the Merida in her dreams never stopped.
Because all of it was nothing but a dream.
“If she ever reports us and has us dragged before the Tower Master, I'll simply state that I cast and released Sleep on Mird—the one who tried to kill me—seven times.”
Merida raised her hand.
“Because it's true.”
Snap—!
Her fingers flicked. Thud! Mird's back hit the floor.
“@#%^*&! Stahahahp! Pwease stahahap!”
Everything and anything spilled out of her frantic mouth.
Thinking she'd fall asleep again at any moment, Mird screwed her eyes shut—but this time, it wasn't a dream.
Overwhelmed by the realization, she burst into sobs and bolted like a madwoman, then threw herself at Merida's feet, clutching the hem of her dress as tears poured down her face.
“Stop it! Please, stop! *Sob!* Anything! I'll tell you anything!”
Mmm. Merida nodded with satisfaction and patted Mird's head.
“Who put you up to it?”
“N-n-nobody! It's true! Nobody ordered me—it was my own doing! But the Tower Master—!”
The moment the Tower Master was mentioned, Merida and Simon leaned in, sharp with attention.
“She told us that Girdon was coming for us! That Girdon! She said he holds a grudge against Kizen, and that if any Kizen students were among the festival's guests, he wouldn't leave them be! After hearing that, I—that's when I hatched the, the plan!”
“……”
When Merida stayed silent, Mird grew desperately anxious and began spilling everything that surfaced in her memory.
“It's true! It's just—but! The Tower Master was always comparing us to Kizen! She'd say we receive five times the funding, so why can't we ever surpass those children! Useless, she'd call us! She's said it over and over! And then when the Kizen students were dispatched here, and I was assigned as their guide, my eyes rolled back in my head and—I, I guess I just lost my mind!”
“So you tried to kill us?”
At Merida's question, Mird shook her head frantically.
“No! No! Really, really no! I was just trying to humiliate you, that's all! I never dreamed anyone would openly use dark magic right there in the banquet hall! I swear it's true!”
Whaaah!
she wailed, tears and snot streaming down her face. Merida nodded quietly.
“Understood. What happened here stays between us.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Mird nodded again and again.
“I'll never tell a soul! Not even if I die! Even if it kills me, I'll take it to my grave!”
“I planted a trigger in your dreams.”
Merida pressed the tip of her index finger to Mird's forehead like the muzzle of a gun.
Mird could only tremble.
“You were afraid of the moment you'd open your eyes, weren't you?”
“……!”
How many days had passed?
Months? Years?
What state would she be in when she awoke?
What if she could never open her eyes again at all?
In her dream, she had trembled in constant terror.
“If I die—”
Merida warned her in a calm, monotonous voice, like one weaving hypnosis,
“—you will never wake from your dream. Not ever.”
From this day on, every time Mird laid her head down to sleep,
those words would echo in her mind.
With Mird sent off, Simon and Merida entered the lodging they'd been assigned.
Within the Tower of Time, 'lodgings'—spaces unaffected by the dungeon's influence—were extremely precious. There was only one on the 50th floor, and the norm was two or three strangers crammed into each narrow room.
“Still, that whole thing back there was way over the line, Merida.”
Simon sighed heavily as he stepped through the door. She'd said, If you want the mastermind found, leave it to me, with such confidence that he'd told her to go ahead—never imagining she'd pin the girl down and torture her with a curse.
“Being halfway about it is more dangerous.”
Merida answered bluntly. Then suddenly her eyes lit up with an “Ah!” and she dashed over to dive face-first onto the bed with a soft flop.
“Cozy.”
she said, curled up tight with her knees drawn in. It was the classic pose cats made between themselves—what feline fanciers called the 'loaf position'.
Simon said flatly,
“You know, you just claimed that bed very naturally.”
Merida, still face-down, pressed both hands against her cheeks and blinked her eyes wide and sparkly.
…It was hard to believe, but—was she actually trying to be cute right now?
“Fine, fine.”
Since wresting the bed away from Merida seemed impossible from the start, Simon resigned himself quickly. She began, still curled in her ball, to let her eyelids sink down, down, down.
“You can't sleep yet. We finish today's quota first.”
Simon said coolly. Merida made a sulky face and sat herself upright. Simon took a seat on a nearby chair as well.
As far as he could tell, there didn't seem to be any eavesdropping magic in the room.
With so many skilled necromancers attending this festival, setting up half-baked countermeasures would only invite trouble.
“About the mastermind, earlier.”
Merida spoke first.
“Do you think the Tower Master was trying to kill us?”
“That's hard to say outright.”
Simon crossed his arms.
“There are signs she may have egged on the Ivory Tower Kids, but that alone isn't enough. In the end, it was Mird's own will that did it. And above all, the Tower Master lacks a motive.”
“A motive?”
“Yeah.”
Simon spread his arms wide.
“What if we Kizen students had died or been hurt back at the banquet? The Festival of Time would have been well and truly over.”
And that would have amounted to the Tower Master hanging herself with her own rope.
“It's the same now that the festival has begun. If Girdon's attack had produced casualties, she could have brushed past it with vague promises of compensation from the Ivory Tower. But instead, she staked her very position on it.”
To put it simply: if Simon or Merida died here, the Tower Master would lose far more than she stood to gain.
The two of them had been invited by the Ivory Tower itself, no less. If something happened to them inside the Tower? A storm of conspiracy theories would erupt, inevitably.
It wouldn't just be the Tower Master's seat at stake. Kizen's fury, backed by public opinion, would come crashing down, and the Ivory Tower as an organization could be shaken to its foundations.
Bearing all that risk—what reason could she possibly have to harm Simon and Merida?
“So what we should do is… are you even listening?”
Merida, who had been nodding off, rolled her eyes over to him.
“Mm-hm.”
“……”
“I can hear you even when I'm sleepy.”
Simon gave a hollow laugh and got to his feet.
“Let's hold off on jumping to conclusions for now, and just move carefully. Time to work.”
“Okay.”
Simon and Merida shed their uncomfortable tuxedo and dress. With their barriers in place, they changed into Kizen uniforms—the closest thing they had to combat wear—and left the lodging.
The moment they stepped outside the Safe Zone, the very air changed. The Tower's colors had taken on a faint, murky gray cast.
Simon and Merida moved with deliberate caution.
The Tower of Time, huh.
The 'dungeon' that had appeared here centuries ago swallowed the Ivory Tower's two thousand years of history whole.
Just as the Ivory Tower had once been obsessed with history and records, the dungeon here was profoundly shaped by everything it had consumed, producing bizarre and fantastical anomalies.
One such anomaly was playing out right in front of them.
“Magnificent! This device is nothing short of a revolution!”
“A voice, emerging from a stone!”
A group of middle-aged men in somewhat old-fashioned dress had gathered. They were making an extraordinary fuss, holding blue stones to their ears or shouting into them.
“With this technology, even mages who cannot cast spells, and every ordinary household—all will come to enjoy the benefits of magic!”
The presenter raised the stone high.
“And the name of this invention is—!”
It was a reenactment of the unveiling of the 'Communication Crystal', three hundred and thirty years ago.
Every one of these human figures was blurred like a faded photograph, and a static-like crackle hissed and popped in the air.
So this is a reenactment of the past, shown by the dungeon.
There was no reason to interfere. Simon gestured to Merida.
“Let's pass by quietly.”
“Okay.”
Historic scene or not, they had no time to lose focus here. Simon and Merida hurried past at a brisk pace.
“You know, if that man knew…”
Merida murmured quietly,
“…that even now, Communication Crystals are so expensive only high-ranking nobles can afford them…”
“You two there!”
Simon and Merida flinched.
The mages within the historical scene were all glaring straight at them.
“The Doctor is in the middle of a major announcement!”
“Where do you think you're going at such a crucial moment?”
Caught.
Simon's heart lurched, but he forced a smile.
“Ah, ha ha! Sorry for making a scene!”
The two of them scurried over and mimed taking seats beside the scholars. Naturally, there were no chairs—they simply sank into a squat in midair, knees bent, bottoms hovering.
Ugh, this is torture.
This dungeon had already been cleared once, three hundred years ago.
The Ivory Tower had announced the dungeon's rules, and Simon and Merida had committed them to memory.
Among them, this one:
‹ When a Being of Time addresses you, comply with their demands and respond naturally. Act as though you were always meant to be there. ›
If they ever realized that the world composing them was 'false', or that the moment they inhabited was not the present but the past—
they would go berserk and attack.
There's no time to be dealing with this.
Simon stared tensely at the mages' presentation.
If someone struck up a conversation and asked where they were from, it was over. He had no confidence he could answer properly—he didn't even know which houses existed three hundred years ago.
“Merida, I'll give you a signal, so…”
He turned—and found Merida's head bobbing, sinking lower and lower.
Of course. She was asleep, in the middle of all this.
Aaagh, she's completely useless!
Whether they would make it through this dispatch mission unscathed—Simon's worry was already piling up, thick and fast.