B9 - Chapter 21: Dreamwalker I

Viola was dreaming. She knew it clearly.

In the first place, this strange dream did not even attempt to hide what it was. It showed her scenes that had long since passed—scenes she clearly remembered having been part of.

Mostly, however, it gave itself away through the fact that she wasn't even herself in the dream.

She was a boy with crimson-red hair.

She was Zeke.

But not the Zeke she had recently met on the battlefield. Not the cold, imposing man who had looked at her with eyes that seemed to carry decades of distance.

This was her Zeke, the Zeke she remembered.

The dream began on the day of their farewell banquet. It had been only her, Ezekiel, and Sophia that night. The scenes played out exactly as she remembered them. They had gone to some pub in the capital, where each of them had spoken about their plans for the coming years.

Through Zeke's eyes, she watched herself whine and complain about the secret assignment her grandfather had supposedly prepared for her.

Watching her younger self throw a tantrum like a petulant child made her inwardly cringe, but the boy whose body she inhabited didn't seem to mind. His words were gentle and comforting as he tried to assuage her foul mood.

In every word he spoke, Viola could feel the genuine care he held for her. Merely speaking to her made his heartbeat quicken. Whenever she laughed, smiled, or teased him, a slight flush would spread across his face.

She had not noticed it then.

How had she not noticed?

In this strangely vivid dream, she could clearly feel how much the boy had cared for her. It was there in every stolen glance, every carefully chosen word, and every moment his attention lingered on her when he thought she wasn't looking.

For a while, Viola believed the dream to be a manifestation of her subconscious—long-buried memories unearthed by her recent encounter with the very person himself.

It was the only explanation for what she was seeing.

But that theory didn't hold for long.

Viola expected to wake after the farewell celebration ended, since she had no way of knowing what Zeke had done after leaving her behind.

That was not the case.

Day after day, she continued to follow Zeke as he traveled with Maximilian, practiced his Magic, trained in combat, and studied like a man possessed.

She didn't experience every day with the same clarity as that first meeting. Some blurred past, leaving behind no more than a few impressions. Others, she experienced in greater detail, though still not enough to gain more than a fleeting glimpse of what was happening in the world around her.

It was like wandering through a shadow world, where everything was a blur and the blink of an eye could send hours or days flying past.

Then, without warning, the world regained its clarity.

Her body, the scenery, even the smells and sounds—all of it became so vivid that she felt as though her mind might melt from the overload.

But Viola barely paid any attention to it.

For in the dream, something happened that stole her breath away.

She stood on the deck of the Alexandria, still inhabiting Zeke's body, looking down at four figures surrounding a fifth.

The man in the middle was Maximilian von Hohenheim.

The ones surrounding him were three of the four patriarchs of the great houses: Feuerkranz, Steiner, and Wellenrufer.

And leading them was her own grandfather, Victor Windtänzer, Prime Elder of the Empire and rumored to be among the ten strongest Archmages on the continent.

Viola's gaze remained glued to her grandfather. There was something about him—an edge she had seldom seen before. A grim resolve that sat strangely on the face of a man confronting someone who had been more of a brother to him than his own brothers ever were.

She couldn't understand it.

Why would her grandfather face Maximilian like an enemy?

But her shock was far from over.

After exchanging a few words, none of which she could make out, the five figures actually began to fight.

The three patriarchs coordinated seamlessly, displaying prowess far beyond their individual levels. Her grandfather, fully Elementalized, was as elusive as the wind. Not a single opening went unexploited by him.

The first time Victor struck Maximilian, Viola felt something twist painfully inside her.

It was an irrational reaction. She knew this wasn't truly happening in front of her. It had happened years ago.

Yet watching her grandfather attack Maximilian felt like seeing the foundations of her childhood turn against one another.

But even that wasn't what stole her breath away.

She had known Maximilian was strong. But not like this...

Even together, even with one of the four Prime Elders of the Empire on their side, the patriarchs were driven back over and over again.

Maximilian was... a force of nature.

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Pure devastation given form.

A giant of molten rock who split the earth with every step. Every swing of his arm set the ground ablaze for dozens of steps, while every stomp of his foot caused a geyser of molten stone to erupt.

Feuerkranz's flames seemed like cinders before the sun. Steiner's rocks were little more than pebbles tossed into the ocean. As for Wellenrufer? Her water never even materialized. Hissing steam was all her spells produced.

Her grandfather alone could vaguely keep up and prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.

But only barely.

More than once, Maximilian came within a hair's breadth of killing one of the patriarchs. Each time, Victor intervened at the final moment, dragging them away from certain death.

Whenever he did, Viola felt a terrible flash of relief.

And every time, that relief was followed by shame.

She didn't want to see her grandfather die. But as things were going, she couldn't see this fight going any other way. Maximillian was simply too strong.

She had heard the stories; naturally, she had. Everybody had heard them.

Commander Maximilian, who had held the West for a century. Commander Maximilian, who had never suffered a single defeat whenever he took the field. Commander Maximilian, who could break castles with a single stomp of his foot.

Maximilian Bombastus von Hohenheim, the War God of Arkanheim.

But she had not known.

No, she had known, but even so, her mind had refused to put the pieces together. She had refused to connect the doting Grandpa Max with the absolute powerhouse from those stories.

Her grandfather's expression remained grave throughout the battle, though not nearly as desperate as the others'. Unlike them, he seemed to have known what they were walking into.

That realization chilled her.

Victor had known how strong Maximilian was.

He had come anyway.

But why were they even fighting him in the first place?

This was no friendly spar; that much she could tell. The old man was genuinely trying to kill them. And judging by what Zeke was feeling, he was terrified that Maximilian would die too.

The fight lasted for a long time, but eventually, the three patriarchs adopted a new strategy.

The Zeke of this time didn't realize what they were doing.

But Viola did.

Their attacks began to stray.

A lance of stone missed Maximilian by dozens of feet and shot toward the Alexandria. He turned at once, abandoning an attack that would have crushed the Feuerkranz patriarch beneath a fist of molten rock. Instead, he raised a wall of magma between the spell and the ship.

An instant later, Victor's wind struck him from behind.

Then it happened again.

And again.

The patriarchs were secretly targeting the Alexandria, forcing Maximilian to take hits he otherwise could have avoided.

Viola felt sick.

They weren't merely fighting him.

They were using the people he cared about as hostages.

After that, the fight ended as expected.

Not in a glorious finale, but in an exhausted slugfest.

By this point, the patriarchs could barely stand, but Maximilian was equally winded. None of them could even Elementalize anymore.

Yet even then, Maximilian refused to fall.

He staggered forward, blood running down one side of his face, and raised a trembling hand toward the downed Feuerkranz patriarch.

At that moment, Wellenrufer sent one final stream of water past him.

Not at Maximilian.

At the Alexandria.

Maximilian turned.

The spell evaporated against a hastily raised curtain of flame, but the effort left him exposed.

It was then that her grandfather struck.

Victor vanished in a burst of wind and appeared at Maximilian's side. His fist slammed into the old man's temple with a sound that carried all the way to the deck.

Maximilian crumpled.

For a moment, he remained upright on one knee, as though even unconsciousness could not force him down.

Then he tumbled to the ground.

Unmoving.

For the first time, her grandfather looked up.

His eyes met hers, and Viola felt a boundless anger well up inside her.

The feelings were not her own, but Zeke's.

They burned through her so fiercely that, for a moment, she hated her grandfather as though she had watched the betrayal with her own eyes.

After the patriarchs dragged Maximilian's body away, Victor approached Zeke.

There was no apology on his face.

Only regret.

"I'm not ashamed of my actions. I did what I had to," her grandfather said.

"Yeah, I bet," she heard herself respond, Zeke's voice dripping with sarcasm. "That's why you sent Viola off to who-knows-where... because you were so proud of yourself."

Her grandfather didn't respond.

Viola instinctively searched for another explanation.

Surely, Zeke was wrong.

Surely, her departure had nothing to do with this.

But then she remembered the night she had been sent away.

The hurried summons. The servants who had refused to meet her eyes. Her grandfather's insistence that she leave before dawn. The complete lack of explanation.

It had always struck her as odd, the way she had been spirited away in the dead of night.

Victor's silence no longer sounded like uncertainty.

It sounded like a confession.

"She won't ever forgive you for this..." Zeke said after a few moments.

Victor gave a curt nod.

"I know," she heard him say quietly. "But I'd rather leave her in the arms of a strong family than alone in a world of chaos."

Zeke snorted, clearly unimpressed. "Is that what you hope to do here? Justify yourself?"

Victor didn't defend himself. He merely shook his head.

"You cannot stay here. Your house has too many enemies, and without Maximilian, you won't be able to fight back. I can't protect you either."

Zeke merely nodded, waiting to hear the rest.

"There isn't much I can do to help you," Victor continued. "The only thing I can offer is a chance to escape."

"...Meaning?"

"I can promise you a week," her grandfather said. "For one week, nobody will stop your airship. That should give you enough time to reach Tradespire, provided you hurry."

A flurry of calculations erupted through Zeke's mind.

Distances. Speeds. Supply reserves. Possible interception points. The likelihood of pursuit. How much weight the Alexandria would need to shed to reach its maximum speed.

The thoughts came so quickly they made Viola's mind spin.

"Why would you help us?"

Victor's eyes grew distant.

"There is nothing I can do for Maximilian anymore," he said. "But I can repay him in this way instead."

It was not long after that Viola looked down at her grandfather one last time as the ship carried them into the sky.

She, or rather, Zeke, didn't speak a single word of farewell.

But she felt what remained unspoken.

The hatred carved into his heart.

The promise that one day, somehow, he would make every person responsible pay.

Viola experienced his emotions as though they were her own.

Grief for the man who had raised him.

Terror at the uncertain future waiting ahead.

And a hatred so deep it seemed capable of sustaining him all by itself.

It was almost more than she could bear.

Her awareness fractured beneath the weight of it. The sky, the ship, and the shrinking figure of her grandfather blurred together until she could no longer tell whether she had fainted or merely been pulled deeper into the dream.

When the world became clear again, she was no longer aboard the Alexandria.

She stood atop a vast city shaped like a pyramid and surrounded by an endless ocean.

Many times had she heard of this place, and many times had she wanted to visit, but her family would never allow it.

Tradespire.

The merchant capital of the world and the richest city-state on the continent.

She looked down at the different strata of the city below. Vast staircases stretched between levels. Airships drifted between towers of glass and polished stone. Far beneath them, entire districts disappeared into the shadow of the upper tiers.

Every level had its own architecture, its own sounds, even its own smell.

The upper terraces carried the scent of salt and flowering gardens. Lower down, smoke rose from countless workshops, mingling with the sharp tang of heated metal.

Then Viola's gaze caught on a massive clock built into the side of a distant tower.

Its face contained thirteen hands, each moving at a different speed around rings of glowing symbols.

She had never seen such a thing.

She had never even heard it described.

Yet through Zeke's eyes, she knew what each hand represented. Trade cycles, tidal shifts, airship departures, and the opening hours of the city's major markets.

Knowledge she had never possessed unfolded naturally inside her mind.

Viola felt her thoughts go numb.

These images were not something she could have conjured up in a dream.

The details were far too precise. The knowledge far too complete.

If this image was real...

Then which other parts of this dream had been real?