One year ago, in a single moment, eleven dreamwalkers were murdered by a nightmare monster. The archmage slew the beast and saved the city.
At least that’s the official story.
I’ve spent this past year year investigating, interviewing, and gathering evidence to uncover a more elusive and disturbing truth.
In the press conference after the Nightmare’s defeat, archmage Hannah and the Protectorate stated that the Nightmare was of unknown origin, hunting dreamwalkers to prevent its return to the dream world. The Nightmare was dead and it was impossible for any more to appear. To most, this answer was enough.
A handful of others wanted to know: whose nightmare? The dream world is a reflection of the subconscious psyches of all thinking, sentient life. Whose dreams created this monster? Could they create another? What really happened the day the Nightmare was destroyed, when hundreds of people lost time and memory as though collectively sleepwalking, and some woke with unusual injuries? And how did the beast arrive in the material world when supposedly a barrier prevents planar travel?
Declan sat back and stretched his fingers. The tips were red and ached from typing out the interview transcript before he began to work on the real piece. Perhaps it was time for a break.
He frowned again at the bottle of Palawan dark whiskey on his cramped desk, in focus below the only lamp that wasn’t crowded to uselessness. The bottle still bore the note, handwritten by his interview subject. Her favourite was all the note said. Delivered to his doorstep this morning.
Declan shrugged and found a glass that… well, the whiskey would disinfect it. He poured himself two measures and sniffed the amber-brown whiskey. Heavy, earthy, woody, smoky. Not his typical preference, but it was free.
He took a tentative sip and winced hard. The stuff was *strong*. But it didn’t burn and the aftertaste was not unpleasant. Something familiar. Drinkable, anyway. For free at least.
A year ago Declan knew what kind of story he was going to write. Half a year into the investigation, he wasn’t certain he was on to anything at all, but couldn’t give up.
A few days ago he knew, almost word for word, exactly how the story would go. All he needed was confirmation. Proof.
After the interview, Declan was uncertain.
He stared at the introduction half-birthed from his typewriter. Another sip of the whiskey did not help. As he lost focus, began to drift, he forced his eyes away from the framed photograph he’d turned around, propped against one of the other desk lamps.
Declan growled to himself and snatched the transcript, a sheaf of pages so thin as to be almost translucent. He was not careful with them – pain though typing had been, he had the original tape and two backups he’d run. The pages he would read now only in the hope of a slightly different perspective this time around.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.
SUBJECT: Of course.
INTERVIEWER: I was hoping to ask about your research.
SUBJECT: Happy to oblige.
INTERVIEWER: Before we begin, would you please identify yourself for the record?
SUBJECT: Maxus McCallum. I am an experienced wizard focused on practical applications of my new theory of magic. Though, a little while back, in the, ah, incident with the Nightmare, I lost nearly all memory of my life before I came to Ravenshore.
INTERVIEWER: We don’t have to talk about what you did before Ravenshore, if you prefer.
SUBJECT: Yes, ah… thank you.
INTERVIEWER: Before we dive into the details, could you summarize your area of research?
SUBJECT: My hypothesis has been that the function of magic is influenced by the conscious belief in how it functions. In other words, magic works the way we believe it works. My experiment has been to develop an entirely new type of magic, powered by my belief that physical strength translates directly to magical power.
INTERVIEWER: That you can cast spells by flexing your muscles, and working out makes you a more powerful wizard?
SUBJECT: Yes, exactly.
INTERVIEWER: You’ve caused something of a stir in Ravenshore’s magical community since you arrived in the city a year ago and took up residence in the archmage’s tower.
SUBJECT: Not everyone agrees with my hypothesis or methods. In fact there are quite a lot of questions.
INTERVIEWER: Beginning around the rumours of your involvement in the Nightmare incident last year, yes?
SUBJECT: …yes.
INTERVIEWER: As a quick aside, since it’s come up – as an experienced wizard, what is your opinion of the Nightmare incident?
SUBJECT: My opinion?
INTERVIEWER: Can you corroborate the explanation the Protectorate and archmage Hannah provided? As someone rumoured to have been involved, and as a professional wizard?
SUBJECT: I, ah, would prefer to stick to the topic of my research.
INTERVIEWER: Of course. How effective did you find your method in practical use during the Nightmare incident?
[Long pause]
SUBJECT: What is this interview about?
INTERVIEWER: I have some doubts about the official explanation of the Nightmare incident. I was hoping you could fill in some blanks for me.
SUBJECT: I, ah, I don’t – I thought this interview was about magic. [chair scrapes] I’m sorry, I’ll have to – I need to go. I have –
INTERVIEWER: You, the greater raccoon spirit known as Rick, and private investigator Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr were directly involved in the Nightmare incident, were you not?
SUBJECT: This interview is –
INTERVIEWER: I might have been the first to piece this together, but I won’t be the only.
[long pause]
[chair scrapes]
SUBJECT: Why?
INTERVIEWER: Why what?
SUBJECT: Why are you doing this?
INTERVIEWER: You believe in the truth, don’t you? You’re researching the truth about magic. You want to find and share that truth. Bring magic to everyone, not just the elite who can afford schooling through wealth or sponsorship.
SUBJECT: Well. Yes. But –
INTERVIEWER: This is about the truth. Ravenshore deserves the truth about why fourteen people are dead and dozens injured.
[pause]
SUBJECT: The Protectorate said there were –
INTERVIEWER: Thirteen related deaths, yes. Eleven dreamwalkers at the same time. Days before that, one other dreamwalker and one Palawan shaman who sold dreamwalking supplies.
[pause]
SUBJECT: Why don’t you tell me what you th – ah, what you know. First.
INTERVIEWER: Fine, I’ll play along.
INTERVIEWER: The official story, provided in a joint press conference by the Protectorate and archmage Hannah, is that a malicious Nightmare found a way to become physical due to an especially unique set of circumstances that cannot be repeated. The Nightmare took the form of a local investigator – Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr – who’d worked with dreamwalkers before, as a way to get close to and murder anyone who could send the Nightmare away. After becoming aware of the creature, archmage Hannah tracked down the Nightmare. It attempted to respond by possessing people in the lower city, and the spirit of Ravenshore, but archmage Hannah destroyed the Nightmare before it could hurt anyone else.
SUBJECT: Well, there you –
INTERVIEWER: The official story is not the whole truth.
SUBJECT: Do you have any proof of –
INTERVIEWER: I thought you wanted me to tell you what I “think” I know.
[pause]
SUBJECT: Fine.
Declan lowered the pages and took a gulp of whiskey. This time he did not grimace.
During the interview, and while listening to the recording, he’d known he was justified. Righteous, even. Typed out, though, stripped of tone and cadence, a thought crept in and lurked around the edges of his attention:
Had he been too harsh?
Of course not. Fourteen people were dead. Fourteen people with families and friends who loved them, with careers and patients or customers who relied on them. Of course Declan was justified in demanding the truth. On their behalf.
Still. Would a reader misinterpret the tone? Side with the subject?
INTERVIEWER: The Nightmare’s first murder was a dream therapist. She was found dead on a rooftop in the old city, shot in the face by a powerful Aulonian military revolver. The murder was linked to private investigator Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr, the only person in Ravenshore known to possess such a weapon. However, no actual evidence linked Morowa-Arnesdotr to the murder, and she was not arrested or charged. The murder was not particularly noteworthy – it made the news, but only because of the rarity of the crime.
SUBJECT: This much detail is for your recording, I assume?
INTERVIEWER: Correct. I’m well aware you know all of this.
INTERVIEWER: The second murder was a man selling dream-magic supplies out of a shop in the Redlight. Same MO. This time Morowa-Arnesdotr was found at the scene of the crime with the weapon, arrested, but again released. Later, in the press conference, the Protectorate stated that Morowa-Arnesdotr made Detective Bollart aware of a Nightmare impersonating her, and he apparently found this credible enough to release her unconditionally.
INTERVIEWER: The third murder was the odd one out. A fencing instructor at a low-budget gym on the old waterfront. Morowa-Arnesdotr was again found at the scene and arrested, again released without charge or condition.
SUBJECT: That wasn’t –
INTERVIEWER: Wasn’t officially part of the investigation or the press release. I know.
INTERVIEWER: A little later, the eleven dreamwalkers were murdered. Shot in the face with an Aulonian revolver, all at the exact same moment despite being scattered across the city. Witnesses of a few of the killings described the murderer as matching Morowa-Arnesdotr’s appearance, with the same distinctive weapon and jacket. Which, again, the Protectorate stated was a Nightmare impersonating her, because of course one person could not be in eleven places at once. Not without breaking quite a few laws banning time magic or teleportation, neither of which Morowa-Arnesdotr is capable of, according to multiple sources who report she has no magical ability whatsoever and cannot even use spell cards.
INTERVIEWER: Now, as tragic and horrifying as the dreamwalker murders were, the third killing – the fencing instructor – is the one that bothered me. Didn’t match the pattern. No apparent links to the dreamwalkers or dream magic or dream therapy. It nagged at me for weeks after the press conference. My editor told me to drop it, but I couldn’t.
SUBJECT: Is this an interview or are you making a speech?
INTERVIEWER: Let me finish.
INTERVIEWER: I did some digging, here and there. The fencing instructor had no links to any of the other murder victims. Didn’t work in the same field, didn’t ever see a dream therapist or dreamwalker as far as I can tell. The only link was Morowa-Arnesdotr, who was present when he was killed and who was a patient of the first murder victim, the dream therapist.
INTERVIEWER: After turning up nothing for months, imagine my surprise when I happened across another death, a few years earlier. A man shot in the face by an Aulonian military revolver. It wasn’t reported as a murder, and the deceased was a petty thief, so it barely made the news at all. A young woman defending herself from a violent criminal. She may not have intended to fire the weapon at all.
SUBJECT: But that’s –
INTERVIEWER: The young woman was Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr.
SUBJECT: What do –
INTERVIEWER: I’m not finished! This would all sound highly suspicious to anyone who wasn’t involved. But you were involved, weren’t you? So you’re going to answer my questions. Especially if, as you said, you believe in the truth.
Declan rubbed his eyes and took another drink. In printed text, he could see himself coming across as obsessive and rude. His eyes darted to the photo he’d turned away, so dad wouldn’t be looking at him constantly with those judging dark eyes.
SUBJECT: I’ll, ah, answer some questions. Remember this has all been dealt with in court and no –
INTERVIEWER: Right, yes, I was getting to that. Shortly after the incident concluded, there was an emergency city council meeting at the courthouse. Records are sealed, so the topic and participants are not available to the public. But the next day the Protectorate and archmage Hannah held the press conference where they announced that the Nightmare was responsible for the murders and it had been dealt with.
INTERVIEWER: So, to answer a question a handful of crime and dream magic enthusiasts have speculated about all year: whose Nightmare was it?
SUBJECT: You don’t –
INTERVIEWER: Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr’s.
SUBJECT: Can you prove that?
INTERVIEWER: That’s why I’m here talking to you. I’d like you to confirm. However based on the links I’ve already stated – and additional sightings of Morowa-Arnesdotr at a bar on the waterfront when everyone inside went blank and attacked her and had no memory afterward, and at the Brickworks brewery where the Nightmare took control of the city spirit – I am quite certain, and this is more than enough to go to print.
[pause]
SUBJECT: You understand that no charges were laid.
INTERVIEWER: I understand that “no charges were laid” is a very different thing from “the accused is innocent”.
[pause]
SUBJECT: It’s, ah, not my place to comment on Kat’s – on M. Morowa-Arnesdotr’s involvement or personal –
INTERVIEWER: I’m not asking you to comment on her personal life. I’m asking you to confirm whether the Nightmare was hers.
[pause]
SUBJECT: Well, it’s, ah –
INTERVIEWER: That’s not a no.
[pause]
SUBJECT: Which newspaper did you say you represent?
INTERVIEWER: …I didn’t say.
[pause]
INTERVIEWER: Fine. Close enough. What was your involvement in the Nightmare incident? Given that after the closed hearing, you were suddenly awarded probational citizenship.
Declan poured himself another glass of the whiskey. It wasn’t that bad, actually. He was warming up to it.
He was cooling off on his behaviour in the interview, though. The text didn’t emphasize the word “probational” the way he had in person, on the tapes. As if it were a threat. Well. It was a threat. Better it didn’t come out that way in the published piece.
Still, doing his best to read the transcript with unbiased eyes, the rest of him didn’t sound fantastic. Though Declan knew he was in the right, he worried the message would be obscured if readers thought he was a manic obsessive. Which he wasn’t. No matter what dad said.
Declan stood to stretch his legs. He took a quick pace around his apartment, squeezing between the stacks of books and newspapersand periodicals he’d accumulated in his research. A stack of magazines had tipped and knocked into another, creating a mess of pages that blocked access to the toilet. Well, he’d deal with that later.
He returned to the desk, the transcript, and the whiskey.
SUBJECT: Is that why you’re talking to me? You think I’ll tell you anything you want so I don’t risk my citizenship?
INTERVIEWER: I’m talking to you because you were involved.
SUBJECT: Did you talk to Kat?
INTERVIEWER: Not yet.
SUBJECT: Good. I, ah, recommend against it.
INTERVIEWER: Oh? Why is that?
SUBJECT: She, ah, she’s not quite as friendly and patient as some people.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean by that?
SUBJECT: I mean confronting her about her involvement with a creature that brutally murdered her only friends is a very callous and rude thing to do and it’s not likely to go well.
INTERVIEWER: Are you saying she’ll, what, assault me for asking questions?
SUBJECT: No. Probably no. I’m saying if you talk to her about this in public she’ll make a scene, and if you do it in her private property under false pretenses, she’ll consider you a trespasser.
INTERVIEWER: If you answer my questions I don’t have to talk to her.
[long pause]
SUBJECT: Why are you doing this?
INTERVIEWER: I told you. Ravenshore deserves the truth.
SUBJECT: Who does this help? Let’s say you publish your story that the Nightmare was Kat’s. What changes? Who benefits?
INTERVIEWER: Everyone benefits from the truth. Don’t you believe that? Isn’t that part of your work?
SUBJECT: Well, ah, that’s different.
INTERVIEWER: How?
SUBJECT: My work is practical. I’m showing that anyone can learn magic without having to study and pay. What is the practical benefit of declaring Kat’s involvement? She isn’t responsible for –
INTERVIEWER: She isn’t *criminally* responsible.
SUBJECT: …ah. I see.
Declan didn’t bother to refill his glass. This time he took a big gulp straight from the bottle.
In the interview, he changed the topic immediately, but readers would know. Everyone would know. The wizard hadn’t pressed Declan on the topic – hadn’t needed to. Others would. When he released this piece, released the tapes, they’d ask him why he was so invested in this story. Why he pushed so hard. Why he spent an entire year pursuing the evidence.
He couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting to the turned-aside picture frame. Couldn’t stop the thought that maybe dad had been right. It wasn’t a rare thought, typically dismissed offhand.
Today it stuck. Was it the repetition of the tapes and transcript? Was Declan changing, somehow, after finding this particular truth? Or was it just the whiskey?
SUBJECT: I’m not sure if this came up in your investigation, but I, ah… died. During the Nightmare incident. Accumulated wounds and exhaustion and attacks from the Nightmare.
INTERVIEWER: So you’re…
SUBJECT: Living dead, yes. The cost of revival, despite its immediacy, was my memory from before I came to Ravenshore.
INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorry to ask, but, the point…?
SUBJECT: I’m in a similar situation to the people you think deserve the truth. I haven’t yet looked into my life before Ravenshore. I’m… afraid of what I might find. Why I fled Aulonia to live in a refugee camp outside the city gates.
INTERVIEWER: You’re saying people might not want to know the truth?
SUBJECT: Maybe. Yes.
INTERVIEWER: It’s not a reporter’s job to decide if there’s a point to the truth, if anyone wants it or benefits from it. A reporter’s job is to report the truth, and whatever happens afterward is –
SUBJECT: Are you a reporter?
INTERVIEWER: What?
SUBJECT: Are you employed by a news agency or publication? You said you were when I agreed to this, but –
INTERVIEWER: I don’t have to –
SUBJECT: I’m sorry. That was rude of me. Never mind.
[pause]
INTERVIEWER: Well. I think I have what I came for. Thank you.
[chair scrapes]
He wasn’t a reporter. Declan lied to the wizard. He was only the court clerk who was told to file the sealed documents after the hearing. Of course he hadn’t looked at the documents themselves, but the filing listed the people involved and the Not Criminally Responsible finding for Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr.
Declan wasn’t even related to any of the victims. He’d seen the envelope for the documents and just couldn’t let it go.
He turned the frame around. The famous photo of his dad the newspaper editor, hard at work, having just approved the front page story exposing the baron’s affair. His son – Declan – half cut off in the background, pen in hand.
Dad always said nothing was more important than the truth. Encouraged Declan to be curious, inquisitive, never give up. Maybe Declan could even be a reporter one day, dad said, as long as he kept his passion for the truth. At least until dad started staying late at work every day, Declan took it as a chance to investigate and find the truth, and when he did he told mom. That was when mom finally agreed that nothing was more important than the truth.
Twenty-some years since dad moved out, at the occasional tense family gathering or dinner, dad had never managed to convince Declan that sometimes the truth was better left unsaid.
SUBJECT: Wait.
INTERVIEWER: What?
SUBJECT: It was Kat’s Nightmare. It manifested from her guilt over accidentally killing that thief a few years ago. Everything the Nightmare did was to hurt her because part of her thought she deserved it.
INTERVIEWER: How…?
SUBJECT: I was there.
SUBJECT: It wasn’t her fault, but she did her best and she’s sorry. If you print the story, make sure you include that.
[end of interview]
He finished reading the transcript and stared at the photo of dad. The bottle was empty; somehow Declan spent hours on the transcript and the drink. The note was still attached to the bottle. Her favourite.
He spun the bottle and remembered all the times dad told Declan he ruined their family with his obsession. Remembered how, nevertheless, dad never discouraged Declan – only tried to get him to see nuance and context.
Declan still couldn’t see the nuance or context in what dad did or why it should be hidden.
Maybe he could see it for Kat Morowa-Arnesdotr.
But wait. Surely Declan wouldn’t be the only person to ever find out about her previous incident with the thief, linking Morowa-Arnesdotr to the dreamwalker murders. Even if he chose not to submit his story to any of the papers, it would come out eventually.
He’d have a talk with mom, too. She excelled at keeping secrets
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