Chapter 8: A Warm Welcome to Dreams

"Why?" I asked, starting to get worried.

She flipped open the schedule that I had sitting on the desk across from her. She reached over and dragged it a little closer, flipping over to tomorrow. "Tomorrow morning is Five's turn. She is not someone you want to be caught by." 

I nodded. All right. That seems reasonable. "Oh, why is Nine afraid of you? One."

One looked at me and shook her head. "What?" 

When I mentioned to Nine that I'd see her after lunch. "Why did she seem terrified about taking her spot?" 

One frowned. "She hides it well. But she might be more herself than I thought. I knew she was always slightly independent. Her noticing that you were off and letting me know was interesting." 

"What, you think she was afraid of me and didn't want to be around me anymore?" 

One shook her head. "No, no, she's just as brainwashed in that way as everyone else is," she said, and she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Suddenly, I got the impression she was telling me that she also might not have been fully free of whatever this was, either. But I held my tongue. 

"No, I think. She wanted me to see you. Either that or she actually is afraid of me, which would be hilarious. She is the newest of us all, so it would make sense. I've cultivated a certain reputation, and a lot of the newer Numbered aren't really aware of who I am."

I just nodded, ready to move on. "Okay, so what do I need to know?" 

"First of all." She said, "Every one of your Numbered will call you Master, and you will refer to yourself as their Master. That is something that you always did. And if you keep doing that, it should be fine. You only ever refer to us as the number. Presumably, you would know our actual names, but you never use them, and we have all long forgotten them." 

I nodded. It wasn't something I would have chosen for myself, but I'd go along with it if it meant keeping myself safe. "Okay. What else?"

***

By the time I slunk into bed, my head was ringing with the set of endless instructions that One and I had talked about. My two meetings never did show up, so when I asked One about it, she said that Nine had, in fact, canceled them. Which is great because there were a lot of things I didn't know. 

Luckily, One was willing to help me decode all my ciphers that I needed to know, the ones that at least she was aware of, and she said she was aware of most of what I knew. So, we were able to pour through reports and talk about what was going on. She did give me high-level summaries of most things.

The numerous mannerisms, opinions, and habits that I apparently had were drilled into me. I was planning on dropping many of them. But I had to do so slowly. At least I was always polite to everyone, even if I did so in a very disdainful way. The habit of not acknowledging people I thought beneath me was one that I would probably drop as well. But it was going to get hard to play along with for even a short time.

Okay. I liked being polite. I also liked being intimidating. It was much more effective to get people to do what I wanted if they were a little bit scared of me. I wouldn't drop all of the habits. But brainwashing women into becoming my Numbered was one of the first things I had to stop. 

Unfortunately, even with me dropping that habit, it still left me with quite a few clearly dependent people. I inherited the responsibility for these women. And that was just how it was. The numbers were all mine in a way that I wasn't sure I fully understood. And I was going to do my best to take care of them.

When One first tried to explain it, it sounded like sex slavery. But by the time she was finished, it sounded more like soul ownership, as if I was some devil that they had sold their whole bodies and minds and hearts to. It was sick and twisted, but she said that the magic binding them had to be entered voluntarily. No matter how much she argued, it couldn't sit right with me.

I had tried to release One right then as soon as I heard about it, but I couldn't feel any magical connection to her. When she asked what I was doing with such a look of concentration on my face, she broke down into tears and begged me not to. 

I couldn't understand why, but after a quick half-hour of frantic pleading, she eventually convinced me to at least hold off. 

"If you're not Master, I'm happy enough to be where I am now. Maybe you can free me later. But." She just trailed off as if she didn't even want to think about it. 

This was wrong. It felt vaguely slimy, but I embraced it as something I just had to do for now and had gone to bed thoroughly exhausted. Figuring out how to unfuck this situation was going to be at the top of my list tomorrow.

The covers shifted next to me, and I sat bolt upright. When One had snuffed out the lamp, I had assumed that she was leaving. I even heard the door close. But when I felt her warm fingers pressed against my chest, pushing me back down to the bed, I flinched. 

She whispered in my ear as I leaned back into the pillows. "Don't worry about it." 

Then she snuggled in under my arm and rested her head in the crook of my shoulder. Her hand slowly danced along my lower stomach as she turned her head into my neck. The warm plush of her lips grazed my slight stubble, sending tingles surging.

Out of pure reflex, I reached up across my body to cup her cheek. As I brushed along her satin skin. I couldn't help but be amazed at how nice it felt. I closed my eyes, leaned back into the pillow, and tried to think of all the things I needed to remember. 

But One had other ideas. Her hand crept a little bit lower. I swallowed. A quick debate warred in my physique, but one side gave in far too quickly. "Are you sure?"

She nodded her head against my chest. "Please? You don't have to. But. It would be. Nice." 

Spicy:

"Good night, Master." Before long, the bed swallowed me, and I fell away, the shadows rising up to take me to sleep. 

***

I didn't forget where I was as I fell into a dream and materialized in a palace made of the same shadowy stuff the maze was. I was somehow aware of myself sleeping next to One at the same time as I was aware of myself in the dream. 

Looking down, I found I was dressed in the same dapper suit I always wore. I could feel my weapons strapped to my body underneath it. That comforted me as I looked around, unsure of what was going on. This was not something One had ever told me about. But maybe she didn't know as much as she thought she did. 

I licked my lips nervously but calmed quickly as I could still feel her warmth pressed up against me. As I walked through the palace, there was a tugging on my mind. Like, I could hear someone calling my name at a distance. That reminded me that I still didn't know my name. I forgot to ask One about that. 

Hesitantly, I followed the tug as I walked through the palace, up a flight of stairs, down a hallway, and across a sky bridge to a different pillar. Time seemed to flow strangely as I moved through the castle.

After I walked across the sky bridge, I found that I was at the far edge of the palace. 

In the center, there was a single massive pillar that stood twice as high as the eight towers radiating around it, and the call was coming from high up into that ninth tower. It was a brilliant white that broke through the shadows as if it were the one casting all the light that the shadows came from. As the bridge met the base, the whiteness overcame the shadows, and instead of walking on a pillar made of shadows, I walked on a floor made of white.