21.8

Zyrdicia's dreams were blissful when she finally drifted off. Azriok was achingly proud of her. She was finally beginning to grasp his final lesson, the one he could never fully teach her when she was still mortal.

After he left her, she lingered for a long time in a state of semi-consciousness, dreading the idea of returning to the world of flesh. She had no desire to wake up alone. She found that thought unpleasant and depressing - particularly after so lovely a visit with her dark angel in the dreamworld.

As she awoke, she felt almost as exhausted as she had when she had laid down to rest. Now that the blood hunger was gone, loneliness replaced it. Seeing Azriok always left her despondent and vulnerable; waking up alone somehow made it even worse.

At first, Azriok had been very angry today. He knew she had been avoiding him, and he knew she had been escaping to her mortal lover's dream world to do it. The dark angel was more enraged than Zyrdicia had seen him in many, many years. She had never expected Azriok could be jealous of a human, but losing her so often to Dirk's dreamworld seemed to have unleashed it. Azriok could scarcely acknowledge that mortals even dreamt, much less that their dreams might be worth visiting.

But his anger faded when she told him about the first sacrifice in her temple. The story confirmed to her mentor that her heart could never really belong to a mortal. She had finally embraced her godliness - which was, after all, really his godliness. With this uniting them, Azriok believed that nothing in the cosmos could come between him and his beloved pupil. He resented the time she spent with her 'flesh-bound bauble' only because it distracted her from fully unfolding into her divinity, but in the end, he understood the 'bauble's' utility. It would facilitate the soul spawning, after all.

As she awoke, a dull headache settled over her, further convincing her of the pointlessness of getting up. She had swallowed a very large quantity of magical sleeping elixir to escape from the blood hunger when Dirk left her. Now the elixir's side effect reminded her why she loathed it.

She tried to huddle further under the blanket, suddenly feeling a chill. Her hands caught on something, refusing to budge. She opened her eyes then, finding herself alone in total darkness. Her eyes nevertheless discerned the familiar, magical shackles fastened to a massive iron ring bolted solidly into a gray, stone wall.

She was not in the room where she had fallen asleep. In fact, she did not recognize this room at all. She lay on a thin, gray mat on the bare floor of a small, cold, otherwise empty room. The windowless room had a single, iron door.

She wore different clothes than she had worn when she had fallen asleep. She had been bathed and dressed in a very short, silk sleeping gown of some sort. The sheer, black sleeveless garment left her fully exposed to the chill. As an afterthought, someone had covered her with a rough, wool blanket. It prickled at her skin as she wriggled.

"I have to be still dreaming!" she whispered to herself. She blinked several times, trying to force herself to exit from the nightmare.

She twisted her wrists, trying to wriggle free. No magic at her disposal would open the shackles. Her surprise gradually gave way to panic. Trapped alone in a silent void, she screamed once, pulling as hard as she could at the unyielding shackles.

She strained against them, trying to pull the ring out of the wall. When that failed, she began to work at the shackles themselves, tugging and twisting feverishly. She lost track of time, giving up only when her wrists were bruised and bloodied from the struggle.

She called Dirk telepathically. "Help me!"

"Hi. I trust you rested well."

"I'm trapped in a dreamworld. I-"

"Your dreamworld is the East Tower, then. You were sleeping like the dead when I left you there."

Zyrdicia paused, trying to discern the truth of it. Was she dreaming? Was this revelation part of the nightmare? She groaned miserably, utterly unable to tell. "I have to be dreaming."

"No, dearest. It's very real."

Zyrdicia swallowed hard. Dreams lied all the time. She did not believe him that this was real. But if he would not help her, all she could do was wait the dream out until she could find an exit. She grumbled, "This isn't funny."

"Nor was your misbehavior last night. You made me very angry. You know how dangerous that can be."

"I didn't have a fucking choice."

"And you left me with none as well. If you choose to behave like an animal, I'll confine you like one."

"You shouldn't have left me alone!"

"I intend to chain you up whenever I need to leave you unattended now."

"Has it occurred to you that I can kill you telepathically from here?"

"Ah, but then there would be no one to free you."

"If you don't take care of this immediately, I'm opening up a Hell Gate and commanding whatever comes through to rip your dreamworld apart to set me free." She blinked. Unfortunately, she actually had no magic in any dreamworld. Magic simply did not function on this plane at all. But maybe he would not remember that.

"We shall discuss the terms of your release shortly."

She broke off the conversation then, outraged. "No terms!" she hissed. "Just let me wake up!"

She pulled with all her might against her bonds. The wall creaked. A crack raced up the stone. The ring was looser now. A swift jerk of the shackles then broke it free from the stone. Free of the wall now, she stood up to survey the room more carefully. The ring still attached to her shackles clattered loudly.

"Now we will talk about terms, you pompous ass," she breathed, pressing her ear to the door, waiting. The dreamworld might prevent her from using magic, but nothing kept her from using brute force. "If I have to experience this as a nightmare, so will you!"