A Student's Dream (Twisted Cogs Book 1)

by Hemmings, Malcolm

  It was a gigantic hall, high-ceilinged and full of arches. She was sitting at the head of a long table of dark red wood, and up and down the side sat the monstrous apparitions who had inhabited her last dream. Dishes and silverware made of the same red wood sat neatly in front of each, though on the plates were quite varied foods. Next to her sat Ele, looking around him curiously and blinking as she did.

  “Elena Lucc-i-a-no!” Black Furs said from his seat at the opposite end of the table. As he had when they’d last met, he said her name very deliberately, as if he was tasting every syllable. Before she had found it unnerving, but he was beaming so heartily that Elena managed a half-smile herself. “I was so hoping that our most recent visit wouldn’t be our last!”

  “You were so frightened, we all hoped we would have the chance to make a slightly better impression,” the Grinning Girl’s smile stretched so wide that it almost reached from ear to ear, her blank face featureless besides the long mouth.

  “You’ve been here before?” Ele asked Elena from the side of his mouth. He was holding himself stiffly, as if worried of attracting the monsters’ attention.

  “I met these...ladies and gentlemen...in a dream a few weeks ago, Ele,” Elena said, “it’s a bit much to get used to, but they’re very polite. There’s no need to be frightened-well, I was a little bit frightened at first,” Elena admitted sheepishly. Now that they were at a table rather than all piled into a cramped litter, the monsters were slightly less threatening.

  “You were quite frightened yes, and I’m terribly sorry for that, but thank you for admitting it. Honesty is a wonderful virtue...as long as it’s practiced among friends,” Black Furs said with a wink.

  “No offense meant, but I can see why she was frightened,” Ele said. Elena scanned the assembled group; her eyes were struggling to focus within the dream, but with a little concentration she could see each of her dinner companions. In addition to the Grinning Girl and the fat man in black furs, there were other familiar faces. The man whose face hung in ribbons around his head, slowly floating as if they were underwater, was on her right. Next to him was the woman who was perfectly plain in every way, although Elena’s stomach clenched at the sight of her. Across from the pair was a man with very thin features and long spidery hands that had no arms connecting them to his body. Next to Black Furs other side, the silhouette of a man occupied the chair, still and silent. On Black Furs’ other side sat a small child with gold hair, picking at her food and not looking at Elena.

  “Oh Mister Shadow, I’m sure you and Elena are far too clever to judge this small library of books by their respective covers,” Black Furs said reproachfully. Even in the brightly lit hall it was impossible to make out the features of his face no matter how hard Elena tried, and eventually she simply gave up.

  “Sometimes the cover of a book is a perfect indication of what lurks beneath it,” Ele replied.

  “If our monstrous appearance was indication of monstrous morals, then what would that say about our dear friend Elena?” Black Furs lifted a glass of swirling blue liquid and made a toasting gesture towards Elena.

  “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

  “What do you mean?” Elena asked. Lucid or no, she seemed far less able to think clearly in the fog of the dream. It wasn’t until Ele motioned down at her hands that she realized what they were talking about. At first glance she thought that her skin had dried out and was cracking, but on closer inspection the deep cracks that traced through her hands were too precise, too careful to be random.

  “I will be the first to admit that I don’t know you very well, Elena,” Black Furs said, watching as she raised her hands in front of her face, letting the sleeves of her shirt fall to see the cracks running all the way down her arms, “at least not yet, not as much as I’d like to...but I do have to admit that it’s a rather amusing form you have. Appropriate, somehow.”

  “I’m a jigsaw puzzle,” Elena realized aloud, somewhat belatedly. The cracks that ran along her flesh outlined the curves of pieces, locked into place.

  “As I say, appropriate. You’re puzzling.”

  “Not really, I’m easy to figure out,” Elena was so fascinated that she was only half-paying attention, running her finger along the lines, feeling the tiny near-microscopic gaps between them. “What happens if I take a piece out?”

  “I’m...not entirely sure, but I wouldn’t suggest it, I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “Pardon me,” Ele broke in, “Elena seems a little sleepdrunk at the moment, so perhaps you’d be kind enough to answer some of my questions.”

  “I am not sleepdrunk!” Elena protested.

  “Of course!” Black Furs waved a hand, “in fact that’s part of the reason we’ve brought you here along with Elena, because the first several times can be rather disoriented. The other reason was to meet you, of course. If we’re going to be meeting with Elena regularly, it wouldn’t do to not have met you.”

  “That’s my first question, right off the bat,” Ele brushed Elena’s protests aside, “who are you? Why are you meeting with Elena, and why do you think you can just pull us through dreams whenever you want?”

  “Oh dear,” the ribbon-faced man sighed, “I believe you’ve started things on the wrong foot with Ele, Wanderer. We really should stop defaulting to letting you speak for us.”

  “I don’t mind him speaking for us,” the Grinning Girl popped something from her plate into her mouth and chewed loudly, occasionally grinning through shark-like teeth.

  “You don’t count, you don’t mind anything he does.”

  “Alright, alright, you answer then,” Ele said impatiently to the ribbon-faced man, “as long as we get an answer.”

  “It’s quite a long and convoluted answer that your question has, but I shall strive to do it the justice it deserves,” the ribbon-faced man leaned back and rested his hands on his stomach, “it all began many decades ago-”

  “We are the Twisted. I am Marsilio,” the thin man with spindly hands and no arms interrupted, turned suddenly to Ele. He had a trace of a Spanish accent in his dark deep voice, although his face bore no sign of Spanish heritage, “the reason we bring Elena here is because she is one of us. We want to help Elena discover herself and her Storm.” He turned towards the ribbon-faced man, “that’s how you answer questions. It’s only you who makes everything long and convoluted.”

  “Using your real name, Marsilio?” the gold-haired child said quietly, “we know nothing about Elena, least of all whether or not she’s trustworthy.”

  “We can hardly ask her to trust us when we do not offer her the same trust,” Marsilio made a motion with his disembodied hands that might’ve been an attempt at a shrug, “besides, her Shadow already doesn’t like us. No need to put him more on guard by being secretive.”

  “Why do you call me a Shadow instead of an Echo? And speaking of secrets, how do you know Elena needs help figuring out her Storm?” Ele demanded. Elena blinked to try to focus, concerned by Ele’s aggressiveness. She was very much reminded of the last time he had seemed angry and she blurry, under the stars with Arturo and the wine. Nothing bad had happened then, but still...perhaps she would trust Ele’s judgment this time.

  “Elena is one of us,” Marsilio said simply, “of course she needs help. As for why we call you a Shadow...it’s because some of us are rather melodramatic, and have decided to come up with secret names for absolutely everything.”

  “You’re no fun, Arc,” the Grinning Girl growled, although a smile played in the corner of her wide lips.

  “In truth, we would’ve offered our services much sooner. We all remember how hard it was to learn control over our Storm,” Black Furs broke in, “but this dream hall is very difficult to get set up correctly, and finding Elena again was harder still, getting her to join us the very hardest. All of us must be sleeping, yet not sleeping so deeply that we drag others further in, and of course the keys of-well, it’s not important. Suffice to say that even
though it becomes easier the more we attempt it, I’ll be quite glad when we finally meet face to face and can dispense with all of this dreaming nonsense.”

  “Meet face to face?” Elena asked.

  “Why yes of course, Elena dearest! You didn’t think that we would let you rot away in whatever little town you’re in now, did you? You’re one of our own!”

  “Speaking of which, we should probably take care of that sooner rather than later,” the plain woman said, and Elena’s heart pounded. She still couldn’t bring herself to look at the woman’s average features, nor could she get rid of the feeling of revulsion whenever the woman spoke. “Elena, you must tell us where we can find you, so that we can visit and help you in person.”

  Elena might’ve told her had it been another of the Twisted, but the plain woman still disturbed her in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The fact that she had no clue why the woman was so disturbing made her even more uneasy.

  “Oh don’t worry, Miss Lucciano!” As if reading her mind, Black Furs waved both hands in a way that made his large belly jiggle, “we of all people know how important it is to keep worlds separate. No one in your life will know about us, you’ll have nothing to fear. Who knows, we might even be able to help you keep your-”

  The hall had been quiet up until this point, the gentle click of wooden silverware on wooden dishes pleasantly muted, but the silence was suddenly broken by a resounding, echoing boom. Another crash shook the room and rattled the dishes, and Elena covered her ears.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just your real life,” Marsilio shouted over the noise, “someone is knocking on your door.”

  “I must say, Elena, I pity your lack of sleep. This is the second time your acquaintances have cut our meetings short,” Black Furs bellowed.

  “Her address! Her town! Elena, where can we find you?” the plain woman asked.

  ***

  “Elena, are you in there?” The knocking on the door was quieter when she was actually awake, and Elena sat up in bed. Across from her, Ele’s wore a thoughtful frown.

  “That wasn’t just any dream, was it?” he asked. Elena shook her head, then rose to throw open the door. Lorenzo stood outside, dark bags beneath his eyes and stacks of paper in his arms. Behind him Lore looked equally tired, but the fire in the eyes of both told her what they were thinking.

  “Lodestones?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Elena can I please come in? I think I’m becoming a killer and I need your help to stop it.”

  Chapter XXIX

  Lodestones and Mouths

  “You killed someone?” despite herself, Elena took a step backwards. She was almost sure she had misunderstood, but the emotion in Lorenzo’s eyes did look a little unhinged.

  “About to be a killer,” Lorenzo repeated, already turning back to his papers as he entered the room, “future tense, and probably in the third person since I’m not going to be the one doing the actual killing but that doesn’t exactly give me the moral high ground does it?” he answered before Elena could even open her mouth, “it doesn’t, that would be ridiculous, it would be like calling a General innocent since he never actually spilled blood. I’d never spill blood but Elena the blood is still on my hands! Inventing a better killing method makes me a killer!”

  His words, combined with the rambling and distractedness, made Elena relax just a little bit, visions of lodestone-related murders slowly subsiding. She closed the door and blinked sleepily.

  “Please, come in,” she said a bit wryly.

  “Ah, yes thank you,” Lorenzo flipped one of the pages he carried over, and another fell off the stack and gently floated to the ground, “Lore can you grab that please?” Lore was looking over a smaller stack of his own notes, but he bent down and grabbed at the fallen page, apparently too absorbed in his reading to realize that his hand was passing through the paper. Elena watched Lorenzo for a long moment.

  “You wanted something, Lorenzo? Blood on your hands?” she prompted.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes! I was going over the diagrams you drew, the workings for the bow,” Lorenzo explained, “and it caught my eye, namely the tensile strength of the string. Lore pointed out the low velocity at which the arrow leaves the bow.”

  “‘Low’ as a relative term, of course,” Lore broke in, “sufficient velocity to cause permanent damage naturally, but in our work with lodestones we encounter forces faster than an arrow regularly.”

  “You make lodestones move faster than an arrow...at the workstation right next to mine?” Elena tried to remember how often she had worked next to Lorenzo over the past several weeks.

  “It’s mostly theoretical work that Lore is talking about, but that’s not the point,” Lorenzo said, “the point is that we instantly knew we could do better! Inserting bars of lodestone into the arrow was easy, as was triggering the lodestone-laden arrows to activate as soon as they’re fired. No the truly clever thing was combining them with some work we’ve been doing recently with sympathetic lodestones...the applications are awe-inspiring!”

  “What are sympathetic lodestones?” Elena was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the rapidfire speech of both Lorenzo and Lore alternating their excited explanations.

  “Wait!” Ele interrupted as Lorenzo opened his mouth to answer, “I have the feeling we’re about to get far too much information that we won’t understand and really don’t need to know. Lorenzo, maybe just tell us what you can do with sympathetic lodestones, not what they are.”

  “What can’t we do is a better question,” Lore said, “I jest, of course, but the sympathetic magnetic force is independent of proximity up to quite a long range!” he looked at them expectantly, seemingly unfazed by Elena and Ele’s blank looks.

  “We don’t know what that means,” Ele said.

  “The lodestone effects that normally happen across a distance of a few inches can be applied within a few hundred yards,” Lorenzo explained.

  “I still don’t understand what that means,” Elena admitted, “please, I haven’t been sleeping very well, and I don’t even know what time it is...pretend I don’t know anything about lodestones and explain it again.”

  “Arrows that the archer can curve through the air towards their target, or can fire faster than any crossbow. Arrows that you can pull back towards you and re-use. The invention of lodestones changed navigation technology forever; I think I’m on the cusp of changing archery in the same way!”

  “That sounds like...an amazing project to show off to De Luca,” Elena said a little wistfully.

  “No! It’s horrible!” Lorenzo waved the handful of papers at her. “How many people will die because of these advances? An archer with a better bow is an archer who can take life faster. How can I live with myself if I am responsible for the deaths my creations cost?”

  “Well,” Elena sat on the bed and mused, trying not to drift off to sleep, “you’re just advancing technology. Isn’t that what you wanted to do with lodestones? Just like using them for navigation?”

  “Navigation has helped humanity, this will help cull it! I don’t want my first project, the one that defines me as a Machinator, to be a better method of death! No, Elena, I came here for a reason, and I’m set on that reason.” He thrust the papers towards her, “take them.”

  “What? What am I going to do with them?”

  “If I keep them, I’ll be tempted to work on it. This was your project, you came up with the designs, it wasn’t fair of me to steal the idea from you in the first place.”

  Elena tilted her head to look at the equations on the top sheet of paper, all of them completely unintelligible.

  “Lorenzo you don’t have to do that. All I ‘came up with’ was copying down some data from books in De Luca’s library, anyone could’ve done that.”

  “But it’s your project,” Lorenzo pleaded, “and as long as I can remind myself of that I can avoid working on it, because I don’t want to take it from you.”

  “I just...I see you t
alking to Leanarda and Mella so often, I’m a bit surprised that’s a concern of yours,” Elena said carefully.

  “Hmm? What do you mean?”

  “The conversation from earlier today,” Lore reminded his Stormtouched quietly.

  “Oh! Yes, Leanarda said something about me taking the project from you...to be honest I hadn’t even realized that’s what I was doing until she pointed it out. It’s a stupid way to work,” Lorenzo waved one hand vaguely, “you can’t get any real work done when you think like that.”

  “I appreciate the fair play, Lorenzo, but I’ve already decided to move on from the archery idea. Besides, it sounds like you can do a lot more with the idea than I can.”

  “But the blood on my hands! Becoming a killer-”

  “Now listen, you,” Elena said sternly. She wasn’t used to scolding, and it felt strange on her lips, but she tried to channel her mother and continued doggedly, “you just told me you were about to revolutionize archery. If you can improve something that mankind has been stuck on for so long, you can find some way to make the technology non-lethal.”

  “Non-lethal? Who ever heard of non-lethal archery?”

  “There are several ways to be a non-lethal archer! Just look at Balance or Cross!”

  “Elena!” Ele snapped the warning from the corner.

  “What’s a balansor cross?” Lorenzo asked, and Elena swallowed nervously. She had forgotten that the provisional garzoni knew nothing about the true workings of the studios, and thus would know nothing about the code-names of Niccolo or Belloza.

  “It’s a...just a few non-lethal archery practices,” she said, “my point is you shouldn’t just dismiss it out of hand before you’ve even given it a try.”

  “How would I go about designing a non-lethal arrow?” Lorenzo’s tone was somewhere between scorn and panic, “that’s silly, how do you make a projectile that moves at those speeds without piercing flesh?”

  “It would have to be large and rounded on one end,” Lore scoffed, “like a giant teardrop.”