"How do you know he's even from the Song army?"
"I don't know. But do you want to fight him?"
Waynie woke up in a nylon tent. The door was open, and he could see the third level of the bunker in front of him—the same place where he had met the poker players. Voices came from outside. He looked down at his body. His right arm was still broken. The damaged limb hung lifelessly over the straw mattress inside the tent. He pushed himself upright and stared at the entrance.
A blonde, short-haired soldier in a Ki-Song uniform stood outside. Waynie had never seen him before. The soldier was a little older than Waynie. NQC was home to a diverse population, but this Song follower carried himself differently, as if he weren't from the city.
"Sir, Master Waynie, my name is Ouze. I am from, and have served in, Antarctica. It is an honor to now serve the queen. These bandits robbed me and took all of my possessions. Do you think you can get them back for me?"
Waynie shook his head and got up from the mattress.
"It was three hundred and twenty soul shards," Ouze added, stretching his neck forward, eager for Waynie's response.
Waynie had no intention of returning any of the shards. None of them should have gambled in the first place. Now standing in front of Ouze, he stepped out of the tent. Ouze followed.
"Sir, Master Waynie, I have taken the liberty of providing you and the other soldiers with provisions while we are stuck here. I could do this thanks to the storage memories I still had available. I believe I'm the perfect fit as your adjutant."
Waynie turned to look at the older man. The Antarctican's skin was pale white, his lips a bluish red. His pores were clear, like an alabaster statue. He was slightly taller than Waynie, with a more developed upper body. For the first time in a while, Waynie stood upright, and it felt good not to balance on the shattered remains of his glass tears. He stretched.
"Mhm. Why is it that every sentence you say ends with some outrageous demand? No, wait, don't answer that. Why did you say we're stuck here? The door is open now. Why didn't you leave?"
"You don't know?"
Waynie shook his head.
"Because the entry is gone."
At that moment, the Awakened with the cap and Florian appeared. Based on what the man with the cap said next, he must have been following the conversation.
"Access to the memory was tied to the leader of the clan. You killed him, and now we're stuck inside. It's no longer connected to the Dream Realm."
"What the hell?!" Waynie barked at him. "And by the way, why are YOU even alive? Weren't you one of the enemies just moments ago?"
"Hey, I'm your friend who helped you. Did you forget?" The man with the cap had, in fact, explained the games to him earlier.
"All right, I'll let you live. But you're now recruited into the Song army. Hand over all your shards."
"Okay, but… isn't that just theft?"
Waynie scoffed. "Your shards are confiscated." Ouze nodded enthusiastically. The man with the cap unstrapped a bag, pulled out a small pouch, and handed it to Waynie. There were about twenty shards inside.
Waynie turned to Ouze. "Search him. Make sure he's not hiding anything."
Ouze searched the man with the cap while Waynie used his left arm to pull Florian aside. "What's the situation with the higher levels? Do we have to fight through them?"
Florian nodded. "The remaining members of the Shaking Fist clan are still trying to take the bunker back. It won't be easy to conquer everything. How's your arm?"
The man with the cap interjected again. "It won't matter. We're all dead anyway now that you killed the leader."
"The bald man was your leader?"
"Uh? No, the real leader is lying in a cavern inside the mine."
The guy with the cap was referring to the three Masters Waynie had killed first. It had happened so quickly that he hadn't even realized.
"Damn. A Master as a clan leader?"
The man with the cap shrugged. Florian took another pouch off him and handed it to Waynie.
"Can I keep at least half?"
Waynie shook his head and took the additional soul shards. He hadn't yet planned what to do with them, but after everything these guys had pulled on him, he certainly wasn't giving them back.
A moment later, the Awakened from Anvil, Merrin, appeared, descending from the second level.
"Master Waynie, sir, there is an Anvil soldier," Ouze reported, having finished searching the cap-wearing man.
Waynie ignored Ouze and turned to the Anvil subordinate. "Merrin, you made it. Did they just let you go?"
Merrin shrugged. He was the person Waynie had originally come here for to meet. "Nobody was blocking the door anymore. Nobody wanted to go downstairs either. Some were waiting for you at the door, but you never came up. I figured I'd go down instead."
"Okay, but before we do anything else, we should secure the base and make sure everyone is safe."
Merrin's face revealed a hint of shock. He had not missed all the corpses lying around them. Waynie was talking about keeping everyone alive, yet he was the one responsible for the dead.
"Master Waynie, we should recruit this man into the army," Ouze suggested.
"No!" Merrin immediately recoiled. "I will never join Song."
"Calm down! Both of you!" Waynie barked. He pointed at Merrin. "You're not being recruited. You're now a diplomat. We'll return you to Anvil. Is that acceptable?"
"But sir!" It wasn't Merrin who protested but Ouze.
"Quiet!" Waynie spun on Ouze before turning back to Merrin. "You want to return to your people, right?"
Merrin nodded.
Waynie turned to address the entire group. "Miners! Guards! From this day onward, we are one cohort in the fight against the treacherous hordes of Anvil, who fabricated an assault on the honorable Lady Nephis to justify attacking our homes, our people, our friends, our children! And this man…" He shoved Merrin forward. "This man from Anvil is under my personal protection. No one is to harm him. Understood?"
"Understood.", lots of the cohort mumbled. Some were looking away or saying nothing.
"Florian!", Waynie called for his left hand man, the thin shirtless Awakened hurried to appear before him. "Florian, you go upstairs and try to negotiate their surrender."
"Master Waynie, isn't that a little too little to offer in a negotiation?"
"I mean, I can give you my shards to give them. But if they surrender, they have to give them back to me anyways."
"Yes, I'd take your shards then."
Waynie handed Florian all his shards.
Florian nodded. "All right, I'll try to negotiate with them." Then he went upstairs.
Everyone was waiting for about ten minutes. Then Waynie asked Merrin, because he didn't want to ask Ouze. "Do you think he'll be coming back?"
Merrin shrugged.
Waynie narrowed his eyes then pointed at Merrin. "You have been up there. You can go back up. Go and see why they are taking so long."
Another ten minutes passed. Finally, Waynie picked up the three gold miners he had recruited as human shields and followed behind them upstairs.
"Sir, we should consider that Florian took the soul shards and switched sides," came Ouze's voice from behind.
Waynie ignored Ouze and pressed forward into the dice gambling hall. There was no dice gambling going on anymore, everyone had huddled into a corner, even though all the guards were standing in the same place. There was only one game going on and Florian was sitting there and betting soul shards. Merrin stood there too and watched. When he saw Waynie, he came over to him. "They decided to work it out with gambling. Who follows who. The one who has all the soul shards in the end, is the leader."
A three and a four dropped. "Yes!", Florian raised his fists in victory. The dealer handed Florian five more shards.
"You bet on seven?". Waynie walked over to the gamblers and stared at Florian "I thought you can't win in this game."
Next Waynie looked at the dealer and stretched his unbroken left arm towards him. Then he fired a salve of glass shrapnel at him. The dealer died instantly still handing out the fifth shard Florian had won. The shard dropped on the floor. Bloody from the Awakened spoiled hand.
Then Waynie turned his hand to the remaining guards. He was standing upright now and seemed gracile, quite different to his usual lazy appearance. Then Waynie fired a couple more salves of shrapnel. Somehow Merrin had ended up in the shot line. It wasn't critical enough for him to die, so Waynie didn't pull back and he didn't want to take the risk for a counterattack from the other guards. If you never gave a chance for attack, you also couldn't die. Around Merrin diamond shaped holes appeared and consumed most of the shrapnel. The Anvil soldier must have held this trump in the back hand the entire time.
The guards that got struck by Waynie were not so lucky. Those who didn't die were no longer able to resist. At the first level, nobody dared to resist him anymore. He had been lucky. If there had been another serious fight with his broken hand, he would've lost. But he wasn't alone anymore, he could put a lot of the burden on his soldiers. With everyone incorporated into the army, all that was left was to escape.
Alone the man that he had met outside the bunker was nowhere to be found. It seemed he never made it inside before the owner of the memory had been killed and it had disappeared from the Dream Realm. Everyone here just wanted to escape from the place and nobody really cared who was ultimately in charge. And nobody was able to challenge Waynie either.
It was hard to tell the time, but as evening wore on, exhaustion settled over the group. They built a campfire in the mine, brainstorming ways to escape the bunker.
Waynie sat near the fire, attempting to form a glass encasing for his broken arm. But it was too difficult. Creating a single, solid shard was hard enough—any complex structure kept breaking. After a few minutes, he realized some unstable crystalline formations needed reinforcement. He managed to craft a few artistic shapes, but nothing functional for his arm. It still hung limp at his side, forcing him to do everything with his left hand.
Florian, sitting next to him, was heating a piece of Nightmare Creature meat over the fire. Supplies were still left from before the Dream Realm had been cut off.
"So, your glass shards turned out to be your weakness after all," Florian remarked.
Waynie frowned. "How did you figure that?"
"They just seem… impractical. And instead of focusing on escaping, your first priority is repairing them."
"I was actually trying to stabilize my broken arm."
"Shouldn't your body heal quickly?"
"It does. Just not that quickly."
When Florian realized Waynie wouldn't admit anything, he gave up and changed the topic.
"A memory that turns into a bunker—that's unusual, isn't it?"
A man wearing a cap, sitting relaxed by the fire, answered as if he had always been part of the group.
"The clan's legacy relic could sometimes create spatial memories. There were quite a few of them inside the clan."
Ouze, who had been discussing escape plans, turned his attention to the conversation.
"Wait. If there are that many people with spatial memories, one of them might have one leading back to the Dream Realm."
The man with the cap nodded. He described another Awakened who had a portal to the Waking World inside his pocket dimension.
"What do you think is behind this rock?" Florian mused, considering digging their way out. It was possible there was something beyond the mine—but likely not the Dream World. They'd just be stuck elsewhere.
Another Awakened suggested sleeping to return to the Dream Realm. But others had already tried that. It didn't work.
Waynie's expression darkened as he turned to Merrin, the Anvil soldier. Earlier, Merrin had used some defensive ability to block the shrapnel.
"You want to see it?" Merrin asked.
It turned out he had won a memory off of the Clan Artifact. That was why he had started gambling here in the first place: to win it. And he had succeeded.
Merrin had never lost all his shards; he had been stuck on the second level when Waynie found him. The thugs had provided food and shelter for as long as there was something to bet. In Merrin's case, he had even won a memory that could rip up to seven holes in space.
Waynie was more surprised that the gamblers had a chance to win anything at all. With growing confusion, he wondered why he had never won—not even once.
A few more hours passed.
Waynie was still fiddling with his glass encasing when Merrin, who had been experimenting with his memory, suddenly shouted in surprise.
A diamond-shaped hole had formed in front of him.
Beyond it, red sand stretched under a dark sky. The landscape outside the bunker, where Waynie had first arrived.
Merrin had found a way to manipulate the dimensional openings. When layered together, they formed new pathways.
Using five of the seven diamond holes, he managed to create a portal back to the Dream Realm.
But then Merrin's excitement faded. There was a problem.
He couldn't step through while holding the portal open. And he couldn't transfer the memory to someone else. It had become an attribute now.
Waynie, uninterested in Merrin's problem, simply waved forward some of his freshly recruited soldiers and sent them through.
Then he turned back to Merrin.
"Don't worry. We'll figure out a way to get you out. Just be patient."
Without another word, Waynie stepped through the portal.
The red sand of the Dream World crunched beneath his feet once more.