34: The Dreamer
Dante blinked open his eyes. A cat lazed on a patch of grass in the middle of a stony floor, watching him with three eyes, while morning light streamed through cracks in the wall and reflected through large multicoloured windows. Casting his gaze away from the mutant he noticed errant trees had forced their way through the masonry, while foliage crawled up the walls as if consuming them.
It couldn’t be a dream. His dreams were recollections of places he’d been to or of places charred and withered by black clouds that swept across the sky. This was a new place – a place untouched by shadow and bathed in life. It couldn’t be a dream…
Feeling numbness in his arm, he rolled over onto his back. He’d been sleeping, in his coat, on a bed of soft grass, straw pillows and cotton sheets – a world away from the stale blankets and uneven mattress he was used to. The ceiling didn’t loom over him like it did in his apartment, either. Instead he looked up at a distant roof filled with holes and sustained by skeletal rafters showing signs of severe weathering. He glanced sideways and noticed a set of cabinets and a crude desk, and a familiar backpack sitting next to a pile of discarded clothes. Girls clothes.
As he pushed himself up into a sitting position he felt a dull ache on his head and poked it with finger, producing a sharp pain. He stroked it with more caution and realised it was a lump, as if he’d knocked his head hard. Maybe that was why it felt like a maelstrom of lost memories and he didn’t know where he was. What was the last thing he remembered?
A mansion. And… crackheads? I was in a drug den?
It didn’t sit right. Why would be he in a place like that? Had Joel tricked him? Had he taken the drugs himself and ended up on some crazy trip like the sort he’d only ever heard about?
No, Joel wasn’t there. Kat was there! Kat and those lot… and…
What was that? Dante noticed a flash of white through the rafters above. Was it a mutated animal? Some kind of bird? Or…
Phantasia...
***
Dante’s aura danced like a storm as he slept, spinning and crashing and tearing itself apart in ways that left lingering scars in the surrounding mana. The most violent tremor came in the moment before he awoke: Phantasia was sitting atop the spire when she felt the rising tension and was ready to dive down and do everything in her power to suppress it when Dante’s aura condensed back to its usual, impenetrable state. He was awake, confused and disorientated – as was to be expected given the circumstances. Phantasia slipped down from the spire and across the roof, dropping down to ground level away from Dante’s inquisitive eyes.
“You’re awake!” she said, climbing into the church through a hole in the wall. He was nursing a bump on his head he’d received when he fainted. “You had a bit of a knock last night and passed out, so I brought you, eh… I brought back to my place…”
As if he didn’t have enough to deal with already! Maybe the shock of realising this was her home would take his mind off things.
“I’m okay,” he said. A flat reply, coupled with an expressionless face, didn’t tell Phantasia anything. His eyes wandered his surroundings and she caught the tiniest hint of a blush on his cheeks. “I should get home,” he said, picking himself up.
