Park Chung-Ho woke up at the sound of his Mobile phone at 10 A.M. That was the alarm he had set up before sleeping. He needed this little bit of rest, but he was still drowsy when he opened his eyes. He felt a weight on his chest. The cat was staring back at him as if to say :
"Did you sleep well ?"
The young man knew that the purring of the cat helped him sleep. He scratched the head of the feline and said :
"Thank you."
The cat jumped to the floor and stretched himself. The human did the same, and he walked out of the room and saw a dancing light at the end of the corridor, his arm in a sling. The fireplace was lit. He entered the warm room where, apparently, Diane was waiting for him.
"Good morning," she said. "Did you manage to get some rest? I saw Nótt came to you."
"Oh, that's the name of the cat..." he realised that this was the same as in Diane and Aislinn's last name. "Wait, you named the cat by your own name ?"
"No, we just have a few cats, and they all have names related to the night or dreams."
"Anyway, it was of great help for sleeping".
"They are protective and work pretty well against nightmares," she pointed to the table. "Check that, there are a few things to eat."
There was a lot of food on the table, and Chung-Ho heard his stomach agreeing to the idea of eating. But he noticed that there were only the two of them in this room.
"I guess that Aislinn..." he started
Diane shook her head.
"Not yet. We'll have to be patient. We're gathering intel on where she currently is inside the Dream Realm. Sasha is searching our books, actually."
She pointed to the door at the side of the fireplace. The library she spoke about the day before may be there.
"Can I be of some help?"
"For now, you need to eat. I'll explain a few things while you take some energy, then I'll have to go for the rest of the day, but I'll be back for dinner."
"Haven't you said that we would speak about a lot of things today?"
"I did, but we can talk when I come back from the faculty. Until then, you'll have a whole library at your service."
Diane waited for Park Chung-Ho to pour some tea into a cup before she spoke again.
"Dreamcatchers..." She had breathed that word out as if it were a burden. "They are really powerful. It was particularly the case for the one you had above your cradle. And it still keeps traces of that night in it. I know you kept the pieces of the bead that was on your shoulder. Maybe we could start your story with it this evening. This Dreamcatcher has a lot to teach you. And those shards could come in useful someday."
The young man was listening while drinking his tea. He put his cup on the table and smiled.
"I guess I have to learn about my past before going into the dream realm, indeed... This dreamcatcher had a huge impact on my life, so I want to know this for sure."
"I need to go now, but I'll see you this evening."
She left, and he poured himself another cup of tea before heading to the library.
When he opened the door, he saw a room bigger than he expected. He had imagined an old-fashioned room, with a lot of wooden structures and old Books and a hushed atmosphere, but in fact, it was a really bright and modern place. No book was visible at first, but there were sections, and there were drawers containing the books. Sasha was here, reading books and writing in a notebook.
"Hello." Said Park Chung-Ho.
"Oh, hello !" The tall man answered with a smile. "How are you feeling this morning?"
"Better. I set up an alarm; otherwise, I would be sleeping the whole day long. I think I still haven't fully recovered from the surgery, and it's exhausting me."
"You need to go easy for now. You'll need some more days before you can use this shoulder again."
The tall man opened a drawer and took out a book. He handed it to Park Chung-Ho.
"This may be a good one for you. You've never been in the dream realm yet. It's likely that you haven't learned the basics of it."
"I never left the nightmare I was locked into. I haven't learned much about the dream realm. In fact, I only know it exists. I worked on sleeping pills to help people sleep without dreaming. I would love to also help with dreaming better, but until now, I haven't been able to escape my own nightmare. Thanks a lot for this book. I will try to understand how things work in the dream realm."
"If you have any questions, ask me."
The book was old, the cover was simple but the leather was soft and warm. Park Chung-Ho touched it with the tip of his fingers. Opening this book would mean to open his eyes on a World he wanted to explore since a long time already.
*******************
By the time Diane Nòttdottir came back to the dreamer's Society, Park Chung-Ho had read most of the book and learned a lot of things he would have already known if he had been able to dream before.
"The Dream Realm is a place where rules can be different than in the physical world."
This one was pretty straight forward. It was documented that people live strange experiences in their dreams. It was common to hear accounts of dreams where logic defied science.
"The Dream Realm is not a homogeneous place. The rules that apply at one level do not necessarily apply to the next.
The are many layers in the Dream Realm, and the deeper you get, the harder it is to extract from there. A Bit like a moving sand, it's sucking you inside."
Park Chung-Ho noticed it might have been the feeling he had felt when he had been pulled into darkness during his surgery.
"The affinity with the Dream Realm isn't the same for everyone. Experience helps masterising the place and getting a higher affinity with it.
Extracting a layer that is deeper than what your affinity allows you to go is impossible. The cost for this extraction is way too high to be something you would be willing to pay."
A price to pay... That part was unclear. But the young man wasn't sure this was something to talk about with Sasha. Maybe Diane would be open for this discussion. At worst, he would wait until he sleep to ask Aislinn about it.
The principles he had read about were more detailed, with illustrations, but the general understanding he needed was there. He was sitting by the fire when the headmistress came in, but he was so absorbed by his reading that he didn't noticed the sound of the door.
"Anything interesting in this one?" The woman said.
"I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Sasha said this would be a good start, and he was right. I'm learning the basics here. But this is already interesting."
"You need the basics indeed if you want to stay safe in the Dream Realm. Tell me what you've learned while we prepared diner."
This was a good moment, cooking with Aislinn's mother and the man named Sasha. But since he had closed the book, a part of Park Chung-Ho's attention was focused on Aislinn. He knew he would have a discussion with her mother that evening, but he was missing her, and wanted to have some news as soon as possible.
Once the diner was finished, Diane Nottdottir invited him to sit near the fireplace. The whole room was silent now, except for the cracks of the fire.
"I told you I would explain a lot of things, and this is what I'll do. I've been watching you since your birth. I knew Dam-Dae and Mark for a long time." The fact that she was using their first name naturally was proof that she had been close to his parents. "He was a school friend, and I met your mom when we were eighteen. We were hunters, and they were the best. We've hunted together for years." She was watching the fire, as if it were reheating her memories. She shook her head. "It was good old times. Things were simple, you know, we were young and sometimes a bit silly. Your father and I were both from families of hunters that knew each others. Both families from the Dreamer's Society. We'd been wandering the dream realm a lot... The first time I met Park Dam-Dae, your mother, I had been assigned a hunting task on a nightmare in collaboration with the Korea's branch of the DS. She was a Korean huntress, two years older than me, much more skilled, much more audacious, a bit reckless at times. Your father was joining me for this hunt. The first thing Dam-Dae did was to threaten him with her dagger. He was the kind of man who always wanted to laugh and make jokes. That time he wanted to sneak attack on me, but I wasn't alone and your mom had a talent at detecting people. He ended up on the floor, a dagger at his throat. This fool was smiling. She was pretty, and he fell in love the very moment their eyes met. They had two very different personalities, but they had the same values. After the hunt, your father asked me a lot of questions about her." she laughed. "He thought I knew her, but we had met five minutes before he joined us. Anyway... We hunted more and more with her, and... well... she came to Norway and they moved in together." She withdrew one of her necklaces. "That was hers. I think this should belong to you. She gave it to me, but you're her son."
She opened the pendant and showed him the picture in it. They were here, the three of them, but Park Chung-Ho only stared at his parents. His mother and his dad. She was pretty indeed. A bit shorter than his dad. Both had dark hair; she had pale skin and fiery dark eyes. He had a joyful stare and blue eyes.
"They were happy," he said.
"They were indeed," Diane answered.
She let him a moment; he would probably have something to say after seeing this photograph. He was still holding the pendant in both hands, looking at his parents.
"It seemed that I had no family left, I have been adopted, but… Why didn't you adopt me? I mean… you know the Dream Realm and could have teached me everything…"
"Let's go through the whole story first. Maybe this will answer your question."
Sasha had joined them by the fireplace, and he looked at Diane Nottdottir as if to say "May I?" She nodded and he talked.
"I met your parents, too. They helped me, along with Diane, when I made a terrible mistake. And this is where the story begin. Because it all starts with my mistake. Since you're at the Faculty, you know that we need hunters in the Dream Realm as well as in the Physical Realm, in case a Dream or Nightmare escape its realm. My family was the best hunters' family of New Brighton, Minnesota. When I was on age, I had a ritual to perform to become a hunter myself, and be recognised as such by my community. My task was to track a Windigo that was haunting the citizens in their sleep. I tracked it down to the lowest layer I could go to, and got lost in the depths... You may know it, time flows differently in the Dream Realm. My hunt was complicated, and I didn't know I had spent 3 days sleeping. My family was worried, and they sent reinforcements. When they arrived, I had found the den of the beast, but I was too late. It had captured a dreamer who made a sacrifice. I had been tasked to track and kill it and failed in my duty... Before we could capture the beast in the physical realm, we got attacked by a lot of weakers Windigo. They number was to high for us and we needed to go out. We needed more hunters, both in the Physical Realm for the main threat, and in the Dream Realm for the pack that was defending the Den... This is when we called your parents and Diane to my hometown. They had already a fame in the Dreamer's community."
He took a pause, and while Park Chung-Ho never went to New Brighton, nor had he visited the Dream Realm and its depths, images had form in his spirit while he listened to the story. But this silence had wiped the pictures away; all that was left was the dark of the room and the fire's light. Diane Nòttdottir stood up, and the dancing flames added a dramatic effect.
"We had been called for help, and we had made some great hunts recently. We felt a bit overconfident I guess. When we went to New Brighton, we thought this was gonna be easy. I was the leader of our group, and with your parents at my side... I felt unstoppable. As If no nightmare could match our strength. We all made mistakes in this hunt, but I made the biggest ones, due to this overconfidence.we started by defeating five Windigos the first day of hunt..."
She stopped her story and Park Chung-Ho saw her stare Lost in the flammes. After a while, she turned to him with a sadened look.
"I was so wrong... This was a long hunt, an exhausting one, and we soon got our jugement blurred. This is how we ended up going toi deep. The den was deeper than our limit coul allow. But we were so full of ourselves that we couldn't accept that we had gone too far. I was the one in charge, and we we eliminated the last Windigo that was guarding the den, I told Dam-Dae and Mark that they needed to take the elevator, that I was at my deepest limit, and that I would come back. The believe me at first. And I stood there too eliminated the Dream Essence of the Windigo, which I did. I was now trapped in the depths of the Dream Realm, but at least, no nightmare was there anymore..."
It seemed that she couldn't go any further yet, and the young man thought it was the right time to ask a question.
"You spoke about an elevator. There was a real elevator in the dream?"
Sasha answered.
"There are paths between the layers. But we need to go layer by layer, unless you've got an elevator. This is a structure that replicates between layers. Once you're in one of those, you can climb easily thought it. You'll need to expérience it by yourself to understand this concept better. Sometimes, it can take the shape of a real elevator..."
Diane Nòttdottir sat in front of Park Chung-Ho.
"Anyway, im had placed your parents in one, and I got locked in this nightmare, way too deep in the Realm for me to get out. I was rescued by a dream. And we wandered the realms together to get me out. It took a lot of time. Like way too much time. I spent so much time with him that we began to express feelings for each other. I knew it was a mistake, I knew this shouldn't be possible, but I was alone, cut from everything else, and this dream made me so comfortable, he was so supportive... Anyway. This is how I escaped that realm."
"How did you escape that realm? What do you mean? I thought there was no way to get out but to make a sacrifice?"
"That's true. That's how I got out. But I didn't get out alone. That dream followed me because I made a sacrifice to it."
"There was something in the book that spoke about sacrifices I think. What was it again..." He searched his memory and said :
"Extracting a layer that is deeper than what your affinity allows you to go is impossible. The cost for this extraction is way too high to be something you would be willing to pay."
The headmistress nodded.
"This is right. You never want to pay this kind of cost."
"But... What did you sacrifice? I don't understand how you can pay in the dream realm."
"You give a part of you, and I gave it my love."
"You mean you sacrificed a feeling?"
"Exactly. You can easily understand why it's not a good idea to do so, right?"
"Aren't there people who would then try to sacrifice their sorrow or whatever?"
"Oh... You're thinking fast. Yes, there are. And that's absolutely a disaster."
"Why would it be even more disastrous?"
"Because only nightmares accept this kind of sacrifice."
"I see..."
"But as you know it, sacrifices in the Dream Realm aren't a good idea as you leave a part of you there and offer an entry ticket for the physical realm to a dream or a nightmare. And in my case, what was a dream became a nightmare."
"How is this possible?"
"When I came back from the Dream Realm, your parents were happy to see me, but they were very concerned about the fact that I had a dream with me. They were happy for me to be back, though, but they weren't trusting him. And they were right. It turns out that this dream had become jealous. Well... not really. I sacrificed my heart to this dream. My whole heart. My love, and its jealous component too. Within a few weeks, this dream became more and more jealous of my relationship with your parents; our friendship was too strong for him to bear. And the fact that I sacrificed my love meant that I couldn't love anymore. He felt totally left, and it was the case..."
Park Chung-Ho noticed that she changed the pronoun she used for this dream. He was pretty sure she was doing her best to try to detach herself from it.
"After Aislinn's birth, I noticed there was something that really had changed. It appeared that this dream had been corrupted by Albormare. Each night a bit more..."
"Albormare?"
Diane's face darkened. It was like the light had been turned off in her. Her voice came out with a break.
"It's like the bogeyman. Some people think that Albormare was the source of the bogeyman. Others think it's just another name. Some think it's the original nightmare..."