Book 3 Chapter 13

“This is the spirit that was causing trouble?” Remy asked in the aftermath, now free from his cocoon. He had initially been a little cross that she’d done that without warning, but understood that there wasn’t exactly much he could do during the fight.

The Promise looked quite different from the Grudge it once was. They were still composed of far too many eyes, hands, and teeth. Yet the hands were clasped together instead of desperately grasping, the eyes were kind and grateful instead of filled with loathing, and the teeth were smiling instead of gnashing and uttering curses.

Willow liked their new look, but her friend still seemed unnerved by their appearance. Which she supposed was fair, but still felt was a little rude.

Hopefully he got over it.

“Sort of?” She finally answered Remy’s question. “I helped them get rid of their nastier impulses, and with the way spirits work you could make an argument that this is an entirely different spirit. They likely won’t remember a good chunk of the harm they caused.”

Her theory was somewhat confirmed by the confusion she felt in the Promise’s qi.

“Don’t worry about it too much.” Willow told the spirit before turning back to Remy. “So what do you think? Wanna make them your friend? They’re still pretty powerful, and a Promise should be useful even without the strengthening aspect most binding techniques give you.”

Willow could sense the conflicting emotions in her friend, and the dreamscape kept trying to shift in response, but she didn’t let it.

“Would it even work right in a dream?” He asked, and that was honestly a good question. Frankly she was surprised the Promise could still stay in the dreamscape considering it wasn’t an emotional concept anymore. She was actually a little worried that the spirit would be destroyed if Remy woke up without binding it. Mental realms could be weird and fiddly, she found.

Which was part of the reason she really wanted to convince him to do so.

“It should actually be a bit easier here? I imagine you don’t have the best qi control in reality just yet, right?” Something that she’d noticed in her travels was that most people couldn’t do too much with their qi outside the body until after binding some kind of spirit. So the thin thread of qi required by her binding technique might be beyond most beginners. The more standard techniques definitely still required practice, but the majority of the work was done inside the body and the connection could be done via touch.

Remy’s projection turned red from embarrassment. “I haven’t needed to practice much. Not everyone gets Wanderer training from a young age, you know.”

Willow blinked before holding up her hands, slightly panicked. “Sorry, that wasn’t meant as an insult, I was just curious. What I was trying to say is that since we’re technically inside your head it should be easier for you to draw out the required thread of qi than it would be in reality. It should also still work all the same.”

Since Remy also seemed to have lessened inhibitions in the dreamscape, it should also be easier for him to muster up the right amount of sincerity for the binding to work. Though she chose not to mention that part. Easier didn’t mean easy, and lingering too long on the sincerity aspect of the bond made it more likely that he’d second guess himself.

Though there was a part of this that she could mention easily. “Since they’re a Promise, the bond might take on slightly different properties than I’m used to. Their concept deals a lot with deals and keeping your word, so even the binding is likely to be affected by it. It should be entirely beneficial though.”

Remy took all that in with a contemplative frown before he nodded to himself. “Alright, I’ll give it a try. I’ll have you know that I’m still wondering if this is a particularly odd and vivid dream.”

He cracked a smile. “If I don’t wake up with a spirit, I’m gonna be miffed. Just letting you know now.”

Willow laughed. “Well don’t take it out on the real me if that happens. I’d just be confused on why you were mad.”

The Promise watched the two of them as they joked, seemingly amused by the process. The fact they were staring in completely different directions so they could look at both of them at once was a point of amusement for Willow, but Remy seemed to be a tad unnerved by it as he approached.

Andrea was resting nearby, tired out from the earlier battle, but not willing to go back to their internal space until everything was fully dealt with. Willow had no idea where her friends got their stubbornness from.

Definitely didn’t get it from her, she internally joked.

She picked up the Dream spirit’s projection, holding them in her arms as the two watched Remy attempt his first binding.

It took a few tries, more from nerves and his fumbling attempts at moving his qi correctly, rather than a lack of sincerity in his offer of friendship. Something that Willow was happy to see.

The Promise accepted the offer after only a moment’s consideration, likely pleased at being offered a promise of friendship so soon after their rebirth. The strand of qi that formed their bond flashed in a way that Willow was unfamiliar with when the spirit accepted, and she took note of the way the bond was almost completely saturated in their concept.

Which was hopefully a good sign.

What was definitely not a good sign was the shuddering collapse of the dreamscape around her. Apparently the process of forming a bond and making an internal space for the spirit wasn’t something easily done while asleep.

Remy should be fine, this was his dream after all, but she needed to leave before it fully collapsed. The backlash could be intense if she didn’t break the connection before the end of a dream.

She thankfully didn’t need to worry about the Promise as she ejected herself and Andrea back to her body, she could feel the spirit shifting out of the dream when the bond had been formed, so there was little chance of them being lost when the dreamscape collapsed.

Willow and Andrea raced along the strand of qi connecting them to Remy’s dream, making it back just in time as the connection snapped a moment later. Her projection wound up in her flowery friend’s internal space, though she quickly swapped out her dream projection for her standard one, not wanting to use up more qi tonight.

The two of them were exhausted, not physically, but mentally drained from what felt like a long night’s work , though Willow knew that it hadn’t actually taken that much time.

Andrea looked far less solid when in their yin form, their edges blurred and shifted, and occasional blooms of color and emotion would fly off them, seemingly at random. Their internal realm also matched that same illusory quality, with the only constant being the stream of water qi that flowed through it, which her sleepy friend moved to and began drinking deeply from.

“You were amazing tonight, Andrea, you deserve a good rest now.” Willow told her friend as she gave them a pat on the head while they replenished their reserves.

“Yep… Yep…” They replied with a yawn, her already lethargic dream spirit even more tired after a night of exertion.

Willow left her friend in their space, fully returning to her body and staring at the ceiling of her unfamiliar room for a few moments. She kept her senses sharp, keeping an eye on Remy to make sure he was alright after waking up with a spirit he hopefully remembered binding. She was grateful that he seemed content to leave any questions he had until the morning, as keeping her eyes open was beginning to be a struggle after the day she had.

Until she finally let herself rest, though she was infinitely thankful that her dreams were not as eventful as Remy’s were this night.