[Erick Sanders]

Keg, in fact, didn’t fail. Though it was a mark so low it would have depressed his mother for weeks, he only flashed a smile and quoted his favorite line, “C’s get degrees!”

“But not employment with the Grey Scarred,” Jack had reminded him, “You better Ace the next few to make up for it.”

We were in high spirits and jovial as we trudged across the lawn from where the assessors had been waiting for their students, our feet squished, and squelched on the sodden ground, and we all wished for a hot bath and some measure of sleep. Mia was just whispering in my ear about using one of the large bathrooms on the third floor when a lanky figure, standing at least seven and a half feet tall, in a thick cream robe strolled confidently around the side of a building. Stopping us in our tracks as they stepped in front of us.

“Excellent, I’m glad I caught you in time. Daron Felren, and companions. Where are the others?” The now obviously male person said, his grey, gaunt cheeks pulling tight as he spoke in an aloof tone and his red eyes showed nothing but disdain.

“Excuse me?” Jackson looked up at the taller man.

“Excuse you, ‘Sir’” The man hissed.

“Jack, That’s Vice-Chancellor Livitus,” Daron hissed Quickly from just behind Jack.

Jack's back straightened almost immediately, in fact so did the others, they all popped to attention looking up at the man, “Sorry Sir. I was unaware. How can we help you, sir?” Jack said and I suppressed a choking laugh.

The man looked down his nose at Jackson for a moment before speaking. “Last night, a young man by the name of Faron Felren, was reborn after allegedly being attacked by your group. According to Faron, His small team had apprehended a pair of native terrorists and were in the process of returning to campus with them when you attacked him, killing his companions and leaving him to bleed out slowing in the middle of the wilderness. Where are the terrorists?” The man leaned forward as he spoke, eyeing us one at a time. My dislike for the man was instantaneous and complete. The pompous, bigoted, lanky… fuck. I

Before Jackson could respond I stepped forward to address the man. “To be fair ‘Sir.’ We secured your ‘terrorists,’ which happened to be a young woman and a small boy and hardly a threat to anyone, from a group of training bots. When that idiot, no offense Daron, Faron decided it would be a good idea to put a gun in my face. It was only out of respect for Daron here that he had time to bleed out at all.” I said, unblinking as I stared up at the man.

“Children’s squabbles are not my concern,” Livitus hissed, leaning even further forward so I had to look directly up to maintain eye contact. “Where are the natives?!”

“Dead,” I said, pulling a tiny smirk, “The boy wouldn’t stop crying, so I killed him. When the woman protested, I killed her too.”

Livitus’s foot slid back and inch, his nose turning up in disgust. At least he has some resemblance of morality, even if it is alien. Literally. I knew lying wasn’t the smartest way to handle this, but if he thought that Geren and Senta were dead, he would be less likely to keep asking questions.

“Is this true?” Livitus asked, looking over my head at the others.

I felt them all nod, Keg even played the part I had started by adding, “It was a good show.”

The vice-chancellor looked down at me, his eyes narrowed. “Well you’re quite the little beast aren’t you. Did they say where they were heading? Groups of natives have been a menace to our system of higher learning for much of my time here but the last of them keep slipping through our grasp. If you have any information, I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Nothing from their mouths but cries of pain and begging,” I hissed.

“You didn’t think to gather any information from them. Are all of your kind so dimwitted and vicious?” Livitus asked.

I ignored the quip and only returned his gaze. From behind me, Jack spoke up again, “If we remember anything else Vice-Chancellor, we will be sure to bring it to you right away,” he said.

The vice-chancellor held my gaze for a moment more, before looking to Jack. “Good. What’s your name,” he asked.

“Jackson Sanderson. The ‘little beast’ is my brother Erick.”

Livitus didn’t dignify the presentation of our names with a response, only turned on his heels and strode away back around the side of the building. Leaving us free to continue on.

When we were sure we were clear of earshot, halfway across the campus, Jackson spoke again. “Good thinking, if they’re dead, no one will be looking for them.” He said to me. My only response was to spit onto the concrete. Even the lie and thought of killing Senta and especially Geren had left a foul taste in my mouth.

“Humans, the animals. Fucking hell.” Keg muttered.

“Do you think he didn’t like the idea of us killing them, or that we didn’t get any information first,” Mia asked.

“Probably the latter,” Daron said. “They have been hunting the natives for centuries, they are only AI-controlled bodies, and they have been disrupting the Nerion schools since this planet was discovered, this place used to be full of them. They do give students a good price for any that are found and captured. I’ll see you all tomorrow,” he said, splitting from the group.

“Where are you going?” Keg asked,

“Back to my hall, and to face Faron. He is going to be in a horrid mood,”

After waving him goodbye and sending our sympathies that he had to deal with his ass hat of a brother alone, the rest of us shook our heads, Jack reminded us that we shouldn't put our level of morality on someone that was actually alien, especially someone as innocent as Daron. I grumbled quietly as we continued on to the Grey Scarred hall and hot baths.

Over the next few weeks winter waned and the cold bite to the air was replaced with a damp humidity that brought continuous rain and continued training with it. After I had recounted the fight with the bots and Ferens group to Diera, leaving out the appearance of Senta and Geren, she had berated me for my lack of efficiency. Diera described the bots and little more than playthings, that didn’t even warrant the use of a sword, and had doubled down on her training, stripping away my time hitting the books for more battle analysis, strength and agility work and even more one on one sparring. She even regularly invited Jack, Mia, and the others to our training sessions, to allow them to group up on me.

After Diera had seen Mia and I exchange a brief kiss after a training session, she had joked that there was only one thing better than having your lover in bed, and that was the joy of defeating them in a fight. I hoped Mia didn’t take her teachings to heart, but with each of the others growing dramatically from their own tutoring sessions, as a group, they became more and more of a challenge to defeat. Leaving me dead tired when I finally made it to the Guilds hall for long sessions of studying.

One such night I dropped a tablet, which contained the entire library compiled by the schools of Nerion. I dropped it onto the table and buried my head in my hands, “What the fuck is Universal Consistency. This fucking book mentions it like ten times a chapter but never says what it is!” I growled. To be fair to the book, it may have mentioned it every page but in my exhausted state, I wouldn’t have recognized it any more than I would be able to read Latin.

“Oh, that’s easy! I would have thought that was self-explanatory,” Daren said as he absentmindedly toped into his holographic scanner screen.

“Who even let you in here. I thought this was Grey Scarred only.” I muttered, looking at his smug face out of the corner of my eye.

“I didn’t see a sign, and no one stopped me,” Daron smirked, “Do you want to know what it is or not?” he asked, dropping his scanner screen and leaning forward.

“Fine, but keep it short,”

“Okay, so… In essence, It’s the creator’s way of keeping as much the same between the real universe and this dream universe.”

“Like, how Earth in the dream still looks similar to Earth in real life?” I asked.

“Yes, but it’s a lot more complex than that. It's not just the geography, but also the culture, morality and the position in the galaxy.”

“The position in the galaxy? Why?”

“Many reasons, but the main one would be navigation, Though I heard some people say there is a sense of calming in looking up and seeing the same nights sky across both universes.”

“The stars are the same, interesting, how the hell would that help with navigation?”

What stars patterns can you remember from ‘earth’?” Daron asked, leaning forward across the table.

“Um… Orion's belt?” I said, trying to remember as many as I could, though coming up short.

“What does it look like?” he asked, pulling his scanners screen up.

“Um…like this, I said, pulling my own scanner out and drawing a quick three dots on the screen, “With something like this,” I added, drawing the extra stars that represented Orion’s body and legs, at least how I remembered them looking. “The three here are meant to be the belt, then these are the body,” I explained.

“Do you remember where in the sky they are?”

“Nope, though I know they are in the southern hemisphere.”

“What about the Southern cross, we use it to…well find south,” Mia added from beside us, finally looking up from her tablet.

“Okay, so what does it look like?” Daron asked her as he copied my drawing to his scanner.

“Like…. This,” Mia said, drawing the southern cross then adding the pointers, “These are the pointers. Draw a line between them then another ninety degrees from the centre, run it this way and then another from the cross, and where they intersect,” she drew the lines. “Straight down is south.” she added the horizon.

“Okay okay, so we could take these and try to find where exactly in the universe your system is. It’s easier the more you remember but you could do it with this.” He explained. “Plus we cut out most of the universe,” He tapped on his scanner and a holographic map of the universe sprang over the table, “All of this, gone, know what kind of galaxy it is?” Daron asked, swiping away whole sections of the galaxy, for some strange reason his nerdy enthusiasm was stretching a smile across his face.

“A spiral galaxy,” Mia said and I raised an eyebrow at her.

I chuckled at her as Daron continued to manipulate the map, “You wouldn’t be on Nerion if your planet in any of these galaxies, then we can remove this one cos I know it’s a hole with no advanced life. Right. So now we can use the parameters for constellations and it will locate your planet,” Daron said, leaning back on his chair and letting his scanner continue to work. I could see lines popping in and out of existence across the map, trying to triangulate a location.

“Why would you need to know the exact location of a planet like this, can you just use a portal.” Mia asked.

“Well, yes and no. Portals have a lot of restriction on them and not to mention your bottlenecking yourself or let's say... an army,” he explained.

“So, you can travel across open space between systems?” Mia asked, to which Daron nodded, staring hungrily at the map as it calculated. I was a little surprised, I had assumed the portals were like the gateways into separate instances, like a loading screen.

“A lot of the time its smugglers, that don’t want to take their cargo through a portal, it can be a long journey though, crossing millions of lightyears like that.”

I couldn’t imagine travelling through open space, just crossing the interior of a system took long enough, I couldn’t imagine spending weeks or months confined to a ship. “I think I’ll stick to portals,” I commented.

“You never know when you might need…” Daron was interrupted as the map flashed, and began zooming in through the stars until Earth expanded in its centre, the wide blue oceans against a black backdrop.

“Is that is?” Daron asked, looked between Mia and me.

“That’s it, nice job,” Mia said, praising Daron.

“It's beautiful,” he said, looking down at the holographic planet with a glint in his eye. He zoomed the map out until it showed the entire universe, with a small blinking red light at the edge where Earth was.

Daron stared at it for a moment before shaking himself, “Um… you see, because of Universal Consistency, you can find a planet based on what you know from the real world. Creators, it’s late. I better go, I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that Daron swept his tablet up and hurried from the room. I monitored his process as he moved through the building and out the front doors, stepping out into the wet grass, obviously eager to get back to his own hall.

We sat in silence a moment, and I added a note onto my scanner, I was tapping away when Mia spoke again, “Hey Erick, What if I came to New Zealand?” she said.

I was still for a moment, I didn’t have to look over at her to see that she was watching me, searching my face for a reaction. “Can you?” I asked. I thought that Mia was in active service and unlikely to get away from whatever duties were required of her.

“There is a job in Auckland for the consulate. Protection services type stuff. I could apply, but I was wondering what you thought about me moving over there, at least for a couple of years.” I looked at her for a long moment, twisting the dial in my mind a little so I could think.

I would love for her to come to New Zealand, knowing she would love it, but spiraling through my mind was a horrible thought. I was not the same person in the waking world. Even ignoring the lack of scars, I didn’t tend to even think the same when I was awake. The Dream was a hostile environment, I was constantly on edge and I knew I was one of the lucky ones, short of a few off moments, like my heart beginning to jump out of my chest at the smell of roasting meat while walking down the street, or a bout of cold sweats from the sounds of scaffolding being removed outside my office. I felt normal for most of my waking life because in the real world I was just a normal, average person. Mia was far from average, special forces trained, if Jackson was anything to go off, Mia would be the same in real life as she was in The Dream. How could a person like that be interested in a simple man who spent his days in an office chair.

Forcing down my worry I twisted the dial to return time to normal before I responded, “I think it’s a great idea, but you don't need my permission, If it's something you want to do, I think you will love it,” I said, smiling.

Her cheeks bubble and her canines flashed as she returned my smile, “I’ll look into it,” she said, her eyes crinkling at the edges, “It’s late, would you like to join me in the shower before we turn in for the night?”

I shut my tablet down and slid from my seat, “If I ever say no to that, You have my permission to kill me,” I laughed, grabbing her hand and letting her lead me from the room and up the stairs to the third floor.