“Wouldn’t you rather take control of your destiny and ensure that none of these will ever hurt you again?” The voice tempts me, but I push it away. I’m feeling clearer-minded than I’ve been since this battle started.

  Except it isn’t really a battle, is it? This is a dream, a figment of my imagination. Prompted by my experiences today, no doubt, but no more than that. Although I don’t make a habit of lucid dreaming, this isn’t my first time doing it either. And I know that whatever I can convince myself is true will be reflected in my surroundings.

  Looking up at the sky which is sure to be blue, I focus on remembering that River, Catch, Shrieks, Bastet, and Lathani are all fine and probably sleeping. As is everyone else. Flying-blade is dead – I remember forcing a spike to grow in her brain, her Bond rendering her helpless against me. As for the other faceless samurans around her, they’re either captured or dead. None are left to threaten me.

  “But that isn’t true, is it?” the voice asks with a hint of bitterness. “There are always those who threaten us.”

  I look down, finding myself still in the middle of my village, but now it looks like it did before I left with my Bound to help the small red village, my philanthropic desires leading to horror for my own people. I flinch back as bodies start reappearing on the ground, unnoticed by any of the living samurans around.

  I school my thoughts – I mustn’t forget that this is a dream and my thoughts shape my reality. Here, at least.

  “And in the other world too. I sense that you have a similar gift to me. Which makes your continued reluctance all the more surprising.” The musing tone intensifies that feeling of the world being slightly askew.

  After all, if this is my dream, and I am in control of all of it…who the hell is speaking to me?

  “Show yourself,” I order, focussing on my deep desire for the source of the voice to appear. Turning a slow circle, I see no one.

  “I’m here,” the voice whispers right into my ear. I jerk away, turning to look at its source. There, I find an unfamiliar Pathwalker standing close enough that she could have bitten a hole in my throat while barely even moving her jaws.

  A moment later, there’s a couple of metres of distance between us, my desire to be away from her reflected in my dream. I keep my eyes fixed on her, determined not to lose sight of the Pathwalker now that I’ve got her to appear. Around me, the world goes blurry, my lack of attention meaning that it ceases to be. But I don’t care too much about that – I have a feeling that the Pathwalker before me is far more real than anything else. I’m not taking my eyes off her.

  She’s even shorter and more delicate than normal for a Pathwalker. That only makes me warier – I know that when samurans Evolve, they have to balance physical strength and magical resources. That this one is so small indicates that she’s probably got a lot more in magical reserves than most.

  And that shouldn’t be an issue in my own dream except for one thing – I’ve never seen this Pathwalker before and the way she’s been behaving indicates that she’s not a product of my imagination either. Which means that somehow she’s also able to affect my dream.

  “Who are you?” I demand. Because even if she isn’t a product of my imagination, she’s still in my dream. And that means her environment is under my control. As I demonstrate by growing stone around her body far more quickly and easily than I could ever do in real life.

  She doesn’t dodge, doesn’t even look concerned. She just tilts her head to one side, amusement flashing through her spikes.

  “You don’t know?” She looks pointedly at me. No, not at me, I realise as I follow her gaze. At the Core which I realise is still in my hand.

  I curse, trying to drop the thing. But it won’t budge, like it’s stuck to my hand with glue. Panic starts to rise within me, my dream reflecting my emotions as it destabilises, flashes of red blood- and torn flesh intruding once more. Off to the side, I see Flying-blade plunging a massive tree-like spear right into Lathani and I have to quickly look away and remind myself that it’s not real.

  Realising that the only way to move forward is to calm myself to the point that my dream resettles, I breathe deeply. How that works in a dream, I don’t know – maybe my body is actually breathing deeply, or perhaps it’s just a psychosomatic technique. Either way, I feel like it helps.

  The Core is still fixed to my hand, which, while disturbing, tells me something that I probably should have already worked out: this isn’t a normal dream, not even a normal lucid dream. And the Core is at the centre of it all.

  I’m tempted to wake myself up – I sense that I can. But I’m now determined to get to the bottom of all of this.

  “Are you the last user of the Core?” I ask, testing the waters. The Pathwalker just looks even more amused, still completely unbothered by the unfashionable dress of granite she’s still wearing, the brief instability of my dream not removing that, thankfully. Though whether it will actually help in any way is still in question.

  “No.”

  I nod slowly.

  “Then are you the creator of the Core? The Pathwalker who went mad with power a long time ago and tried to conquer all her people?”

  “I didn’t go mad with power!” she hisses, anger flashing through her spikes.

  “Then you are her?” I pounce on her implicit admission.

  “No,” she responds. Then, as she sees the look I’m giving her, she sighs and continues. “I am but a memory of her. The real Soul-binder died long ago. I am the last remnant, trapped within the Core you hold.”

  I feel suddenly more than a little icky. So the Core isn’t just a container of a portion of a Skill matrix; it’s actually a part of someone? And my name isn’t even Harry, I remark inanely to myself as a distraction from the very idea which sends revulsion through me. I don’t know why I’m reacting to it so strongly, but something about the idea just strikes me as….wrong.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  And now I’m suddenly hoping that this Core can’t act in the same way as the diary a certain boy wizard stabbed with a fang. I could generate extremely potent venom and stab the Core myself if necessary, but not if I somehow get possessed. But for now I need more information. And I know just how to approach that since I doubt that this cagey soul remnant of a long-dead Pathwalker will just answer questions directly.

  “So, if you didn’t go mad with power, what happened?” Everyone likes to talk about themselves, right? Especially if they feel like they’ve been misunderstood. And this Pathwalker practically screams that particular quality.

  “I was on a quest! To save everyone.” True to my predictions, she’s more than eager to ‘set the record straight’.

  “How did you want to save everyone? And save them from what?”

  “From themselves!” she practically screams. It’s odd that her sounds are actually coming out as words rather than the usual grunts and clicks. I put it down to this being a dream. “Everyone was so busy trying to get to the top of the pile, become the strongest in their group, that no one was willing to help each other. I went from being the lowest ranking Unevolved to the lowest ranking Evolved, despite the fact that I had a gift so much stronger than my sisters, only because I was unable to use it in combat. Our system was broken…and I wanted to fix it.”

  “What was your gift?” I reply, though I admit to being slightly disturbed at how her words hint at a thought process not all that dissimilar to my own.

  The Pathwalker hesitates for a moment, eying me.

  “Can you not guess?”

  “Well,” I prevaricate, my thoughts racing. “From your name, and from what history says of you, you were able to bind the souls of your opponents, something like my own talents as a Tamer. And I know that ranking battles tend to limit tamers unfairly. But even then they’re able to bring at least one of their companions with them.”

  “Not in my time,” she replies bitterly, her features twisting in a way that samurans aren’t usually capable of.

  “Oh,” I reply intelligently. Then my eyes narrow. “Wait. Was it because of you that tamers started being able to bring some of their Bound into the fight?” Because they didn’t want another disaster in the making?

  “Perhaps. But even the one time I was allowed to bring my spirits into the fight after begging and pleading for far too long, it did me no good,” she confides with that same bitterness in her voice and spikes. “Before I became Enlightened, I was only able to control free spirits, and weak ones at that. They could do little to help me in a ranking fight. Their information capacity was useless when I could already see my opponent clearly; their physical strength was limited. Perhaps I could trip one of my sisters or snag their footing for a moment, but without an ability to force them to concede, I still lost in the end.”

  I frown. What she’s saying here is in juxtaposition with what I know about the Pathwalker who used to be in control of my village – before River killed her. Shaman was also a controller of spirits, as far as I know, and more – a ritualist if her sacrifice of the hatchlings was anything to go by. Was the latter the reason why she managed to win enough battles to become leader? And stay as leader for several years? Had her rituals increased the power of the spirits under her command? Certainly, from River’s description of that final fight, she was able to use the spirits to hold River in place, despite River being a physically more powerful Unevolved at the time. Or was this Pathwalker just not imaginative enough to realise how she could use her spirits to best effect?

  It’s probably irrelevant – this spirit is long dead, after all. Unless the Core can act as a sort of soul-jar, that is. Or a lich’s phylactery.

  I quickly move my thoughts away from that, for fear that my dream will respond to them.

  “So when you Evolved a second time, you found yourself able to control the spirits of the living?” I check, seeing a brief confirmation flash through Soul-binder’s spikes.

  “Much like you,” she comments, her eyes glittering. I wince a little at the hit, accurate as it might be.

  “And somehow you found a way of embedding that ability into a beast Core?” I ask, cutting to the heart of what I’m really interested in. “Was putting a bit of soul into it intentional or accidental?”

  The Pathwalker looks at me for a long moment before responding. I note flashes of colour in her spikes indicating surprise and hints that she might be impressed with my guess.

  “The first time was accidental. But when I found that it was necessary for the ability to be used by others, I did it intentionally. It was not a problem – souls grow back.”

  That, I already knew, having had to heal my own soul before. Which makes me wonder something – did Kalanthia put a bit of her soul into Lathani when she lent her the ‘blueprint’? Is that why she suffered such massive reductions to her abilities and resource pools until Lathani Evolved and gave it back with interest? I also have to question how often Soul-binder did it – from what I can tell, unless the soul is actively healed, it will take a long time to replenish. But I keep those questions to myself.

  “Impressive,” I say to her genuinely and see a hint of pride enter her spikes. “I hear that it tended to drain those Bound to it until they were lifeless husks, though. Was that part of your original ability?”

  Soul-binder looks at me steadily.

  “It was not.”

  I frown at her short answer, my mind ticking over what I already know to try to work out what lies behind it. Why would an ability have a draining effect when used through a Core when not used by the original Pathwalker? Suddenly, the answer strikes me. Energy.

  All my Skills use some form of Energy, whether mana or stamina. I don’t doubt that there are Skills which use health too. What if this, divorced from the Pathwalker who developed it, is one of them? I know from my own experience that Willpower is strongly linked to the soul – and is also the determiner for health regeneration, which implies that it’s also strongly linked to health. What if when Soul-binder used her ability, it just used mana, but when others used it, it took their health instead?

  I’ll need to be aware of that if I try copying this process in any way – I don’t want to create more artifacts which kill the people who use it. And the fact that this samuran obviously knew what the cost was to her artifacts and yet continued using them and even making more doesn’t speak well of her character.

  “So, in short, you wanted to make things better for samurans who weren’t blessed with combat-capable gifts, yet you ended up killing far more than you perhaps intended, both allies and enemies,” I remark, pinning her with a hard look. “And you say you didn’t go mad from power.”

  “I didn’t!” she protests, though after everything I’ve learned it feels weak. “I wanted to change things! The strongest sets the rules so I needed to be the strongest.”

  “Ruling over a battlefield of blood and tears,” I tell her bitterly, the dream around us dissolving into flashes of the battles I was in today – and the blood I saw spilled.

  “Perhaps you can help me. With your ability and mine combined, we will be unstoppable. I sense that you are a strong Pathwalker. You will not suffer the doom that too many of my people did. And do not tell me you do not also desire change, for the weak to be given the opportunity to become strong.”

  “I don’t deny it,” I say carefully. “But I’m not going to just go out and kill others just because they disagree with me. If they attack me or mine, I’ll fight back. But I’m not taking the fight to them. Not to those who have never done anything to me.”

  “You say that now, but you don’t know how far they will push you,” she tells me with a sad expression. “Just remember, I am here to help you – when you’re ready.”

  With those vaguely ominous words, I’m thrust back into the waking world, waking up with a gasp. I summon a small ball of fire into my left hand to reveal the familiar sights of my bathroom-bedroom. Somehow, my restlessness has moved me off the mattress completely, and clear over to the other side of the room.

  I feel something clenched tightly in my right hand. I look down and ice grips my heart even as it confirms what I unconsciously already knew.

  It’s the black Core.

  here!

  here!

  here!

  here