Chapter 6
The screen goes black, then opens to a cinematic.
A voiceover gives me the story of the Children of Hypnos:
In the early days of human civilization, as cities were established and populations grew, the nightmares of humankind became powerful enough to emerge from the Dream, humanity’s collective subconscious, and enter the waking world.
Elite fighters known as dreamhunters came into existence to keep humanity safe from its own subconscious.
The Hypnos State, a global organization that oversees all dreamhunters, was formed to maintain order.
As the narrator speaks, Emery jumps off the building.
The camera changes to a wide shot of her walking across a campus.
There’s the fountain in the middle of the campus, and behind it the big gymnasium with the name Hothram Hall carved above the doors.
Other students pass Emery on their way to classes.
Then a closer shot: Emery’s hand reaches out and taps a girl on the shoulder as she walks by.
The girl turns, revealing her face, and I sit up straight.
“Jacqueline!” It’s one of Emery’s best friends, and sitting with her are the other members of the Fenhallow student council. Emery moves away.
The narrator goes on:
In North America, the Hypnos State has created the Sleeping City, a hub for dreamhunter training. But a high concentration of dreamhunters doesn’t make the city safer; in fact, it has become a hotbed of Dream activity.
Emery passes another group of characters. I recognize all of them too, and seeing them brought to life in such detail has me grinning. I didn’t realize how much I loved these characters already, even after just a book and a half.
The narrator continues.
As a dreamhunter of Fenhallow Academy, it’s your job to contain this Dream activity.
Protect civilians from nightmares, hunt down rogue dreamhunters, and as always, stay on the lookout for your doppelg?nger—the manifestation of your subconscious, out to kill you and take your place in the waking world.
But it is no longer business as usual for you and the other dreamhunters.
Whispers of a larger foe are spreading, a foe that could shake the very foundations of the Sleeping City.
It’s up to you to discover if the claims of the Hypnos State are true, or if dreamhunters have been fed lies for centuries.
Emery stops at the open Fenhallow gates, alongside a boy her age.
A close-up reveals Wesley Jager, her dreamhunting partner, giving her a look of exasperation because she took so long.
Then, finally, the shot settles on Emery’s face.
This is before really bad things have started happening to the characters, so she is still Queen Emery, the best dreamhunting student in the school, and a bit full of herself.
She smiles at Wes in that challenging way I so liked on Raven when I made her, and I start to wonder if I didn’t make her a bit like Emery on purpose.
Emery raises her smoky blue eyes and looks straight down the camera. Then she raises her gun.
The screen goes black again and flashes with a line of bold text.
THE HUNT IS ON
The game world loads in. Raven is sitting in the back of a moving car, and the driver is talking to her.
She—I—am a transfer to Fenhallow, and this is my first day.
I have to get acclimated. After the short cutscene, the car drops me at the wrought-iron gates of Fenhallow.
Already there are other players here, running in and out of the gates, up the long drive onto campus.
Their names are displayed in purple text that floats above their heads.
Below their names is more text inside brackets—groups, maybe?
Servers? They have wildly different armor and weapons, and some even ride mounts.
Horses with flaming manes, giant panthers, motorcycles.
There’s a mini map in the top right corner of the screen, a health and stamina bar for Raven in the top left, and an empty action bar across the bottom.
Tutorials show me how to move around with the mouse and keyboard and access my menus.
A quest indicator on my mini map tells me where to go.
I make Raven trot onto the Fenhallow campus, up a winding drive and past brick and stone buildings.
Wrought-iron lampposts bathe the walkways in warm yellow light.
Over the tops of the buildings, the skyscrapers of the Sleeping City make a sparkling backdrop as night falls. Ethereal music sets the mood.
The quest marker leads me into the middle of campus, to the quad and the big fountain, and then up into the administration building.
I take my time looking at the buildings, examining the little details, sitting on benches, sinking into the feeling of being inside the story.
I eventually wander up to the administration building.
The quest marker leads me to the receptionist at the front desk, who tells me I need to continue my quest by going up to the second floor and speaking to the dean of the school.
I run up the stairs, looking at the artwork, the pictures, the cases displaying replica weapons of famous dreamhunters.
So many details that weren’t even in the books.
The dean greets me and gives me a handful of quests clearly meant to be tutorials—weapons training in Hothram Hall, selling and buying items in the Crossing, checking out my dorm, where I can sign up for social events.
I lose all sense of time after that. I run back and forth across campus, talking to NPCs—non-player characters—that have been made up just for the game, along with the characters I know from the books.
I learn my weapon skills and choose which weapon I want to start with.
A giant hammer, like Wes. A dreamhunter’s weapon says something about who they are, and a hammer is how I wish I could be: blunt.
It’s not aspirational; I am blunt at my core, but it’s not acceptable to be that way with people.
It makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know how to handle it.
I’m given quests to venture outside campus, into the Sleeping City, to hunt down nightmares.
I level up once, twice, three times, four times.
I fill my inventory with items, figure out where to sell them all, then fill it again.
I find better armor and better stats for my weapon.
I pore over my skill tree to decide how I want to build Raven.
I learn how to use the world chat and start talking to other players.
They have an entire dialect all their own, and figuring it out is like filling out a spreadsheet in my head of all the things I need to know to communicate the way I want.
Words like mats, instance, LFG, build, spec, raid, DPS, tank, aggro.
Boppers are new players. Players join clans—with clan names in brackets added under their character names—to find groups of people to do dungeons and raids.
The dungeons and raids all have their own names, their own acronyms, their own nicknames.
When I use these words, other players know exactly what I mean.
There is no emotion or interpretation to confuse me.
If I typed into the chat “LFG FM DPS,” other players would understand it as “a player who does high damage output is looking for a group for the Fenhallow Manor dungeon.”
It is exactly the way I’ve always wanted to talk to people. Bluntly.
There’s a knock at my bedroom door. I reluctantly pull myself away from the screen.
“Evie, you okay in there?” Mom asks, her voice muffled. “I got a call from school. You left early?”
The clock on my bedside table says four forty. I’ve been playing for almost five hours. My eyes hurt and my back is stiff.
“Uh, yeah, fine,” I call back. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize, just . . . what happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
She cracks open the door and sticks her head in. Her gray-blond hair is falling out of its bun and she’s still wearing her dealership quarter zip. She must have just gotten home. I didn’t even hear her car pull in. “What are you doing?”
She asks it without any pretense, but my hackles still go up. “Playing a game.”
“Not looking on social media?”
“No.”
“Okay. What happened at school?”
I shift uneasily, flushing with shame. This morning at school seems so long ago now, and I was so angry and unhinged.
What was I thinking, talking to a teacher like that?
Even if I do think Mr. Cox is an unforgivable blowhard.
“I got mad at the teacher,” I say. “He tried to take my book. I know I shouldn’t have been reading in class, but I had already put it away and he still wanted to take it. ”
Mom’s brow furrows. “That’s not like you.”
I shrug. I don’t know what she wants me to say.
“Well . . . maybe you can talk to the therapist about it.”
“Yeah.”
“You really aren’t online?”
I turn my computer toward her. As I lift it off my legs, I realize how hard the fan is running, how hot it is. “Game,” I say.
“Oh. Okay. Well, we need to leave soon, so put some shoes and a coat on. It’s her last appointment of the day, at five thirty. Maybe on the way home, we can pick up some dinner. How about Chilly’s Chicken? We haven’t had that in a while?”
The thought of Chilly’s makes my stomach knot up. “I’m not hungry.”
“You might be later.”
“Whatever is fine.”
She retreats. I get a book to raise my laptop off my legs and return to the game.
I still have some time. Raven stands on a sidewalk, shifting her weight from foot to foot, waiting for me to continue the quest I was given.
The reward is an upgrade for my weapon. Once I have it, I’ll be able to move on to the next area.
I can do dungeons—also called instances—soon, and I’ll be able to get even better gear.
I understand why Alissa loved this game so much that she wrote guides for it.
The momentum is addictive, the repetition easy to fall into and so comforting.
I do this quest and I get a reward that makes me stronger so I can do the next quest. Everything is expected.
I will always get the reward I’m promised, if I try hard enough.
I can get good enough to defeat any challenge if I just find the right build, the right strategy, the right friends.
I don’t understand everything about this game yet, but I want to. I want to put all these terms in their spreadsheet, I want to line up all the data points of my stats and my gear and my build, I want to join a powerful clan and beat the toughest raids. I want to be the best.
I start Raven running again. Her steps are like drumbeats.
One two three four five . . .