Chapter 16
When I can’t be with Ash, I walk in a world where I speak a secret language. I sprinkle in a few words here and there to see if anyone else knows it, but they never do.
This was the world Alissa inhabited. A place where all the people who spoke her language were online, and even her best friend didn’t share in her most important interest.
If I’d started playing sooner, would she have felt like she belonged? Could we have made a place for people like us here, offline, where she felt safe? When the real world is such shit, and the world of Fenhallow is so comforting and predictable?
I don’t know.
In the days leading up to the Dreambreaker release, I keep my gaming secret from Mom and hold my spot on the raid list. If I play for too long, I start getting paranoid that she’ll find me, but worse than paranoia is the guilt.
The guilt is a dog training collar, and I’m constantly getting zapped.
I know she’s just trying to help me, I know I hurt her, and I don’t want to keep hurting her.
So when she’s home, I make sure to eat dinner with her, help her keep the house clean, ask her how work was.
She relaxes. Starts watching her shows at night again.
When she seems like she’s settled in, I retreat to my room.
I play CoH for a while, then read the fourth book before bed.
I’m still enjoying the books, but reading them is more of a task than anything now, a way to contextualize the characters and locations in the game.
I finish book four the day before the Dreambreaker release.
The first person I think to talk about it with is Alissa, but that’s impossible.
Then I think about the receptionist, but I don’t have another therapy appointment until next week. I text Ash.
Tuesday, April 8
10:37 p.m.
That’s where she left it for FIFTEEN YEARS?
***
Children of Hypnos The books
Oh lol Yeah, it’s messed up
Fans just had to deal with not knowing the ending for fifteen years Why’d Olivia Kane decide to finish them now?
Dunno She had, like, a mental breakdown before. Maybe she got better? Or they offered her a ton of money.
If Emery dies in the fifth one, I riot
Lol
I’m mad that I didn’t read these before
It wouldn’t have changed anything.
I stare at his last text for a while. The meaning he parsed wasn’t exactly what I’d intended, but now I’m thinking about it again. That reading these sooner might have given me a window into how Alissa was feeling. That she was being hunted. That if she didn’t fight it, she would die.
In Children of Hypnos, all the characters suffer under mental illness, because that’s what being a dreamhunter is.
As the story goes on, the characters get worse, some succumbing to their illnesses, some fighting like hell to escape them.
There is hope, in the later books, that there is a cure or a fix or some way to reverse the process, but it depends on the dreamhunters.
Others can help them, but they must help themselves too.
I can see the logical progression into the fifth book: Will these characters heal themselves? Can they understand the depths of their own minds and, with the help of their support structures, harness what they have suffered and become something greater?
But the fifth book never came out. That question was never answered.
We were left with a cast of characters drowning under the weight of their demons.
Olivia Kane, the author, disappeared. Until this fifth book was announced, no one really knew what had become of her.
Had she disappeared into the aether of the Dream? Been killed by her doppelg?nger?
For someone who identified with these characters and wanted—needed—to see them healed, that lack of a final book would have been crushing.
Alissa knew a fifth book was coming out, though. She knew there was light ahead.
It still wasn’t enough.
The morning of the Dreambreaker release, Ash finds me by my locker. “Raid on Saturday. You ready?”
“As ready as I can be, I guess.” I don’t want my nerves to show on my face. “Wish I was as calm as you.”
“You’ll do great,” he says, smiling. “You shouldn’t compare yourself to me, though. I have help.”
He’s high a lot of the time I see him now, but he’s not so angry anymore, so who am I to call him on it? If the weed is helping, then good. He doesn’t deserve to feel so much hatred all the time.
When I get home, my power cable sits in front of my chair at the kitchen table.
Mom must have gotten curious about CoH and discovered today was an important date.
A wash of affection and guilt hits me. Why did I get so angry at her?
Of course she was going to give me the cord back.
I hurry to my room and turn my computer on.
Because I pre-downloaded Dreambreaker, I only have to wait for the installation, and then I’m sitting in the server queue, waiting to get into the game.
The lobby screen has changed with the new expansion.
Emery appears out of the azure clouds of the Dream, wearing her black Tombstone outfit, her Peacemakers raised, and her face hidden beneath the brim of her hat.
Behind her is another version of her, but wearing a sparkling black dress, with her hair floating around her head, also hiding her face.
Her doppelg?nger. It is difficult to tell which of them is more of a nightmare; by this point in the books, Emery is starting to lose herself to the pressures of the Dream.
While I wait to get into the game, I check the clan Discord. There are tons of active threads. Clan members ask for materials for crafting, look for groups, ask for help with quests. I’ve been added to a special raid channel I haven’t seen until now.
Zookini posted today at 2:35 p.m.
The raid will have something to do with this new nullifier mechanic
I doubt anyone will have to respec into the subclass, but we’ll need the right weapons
HundredKnives posted today at 2:42 p.m.
What time do we need to be online on Saturday?
Zookini posted today at 2:44 p.m.
Raid opens at 12 p.m. PST. Adjust for your time zone and get on an hour earlier.
So PST get on at eleven, EST at two, etc.
HundredKnives posted today at 2:52 p.m.
Got it
Leelea posted today at 3:01 p.m.
I’ll have pots in the bank Saturday morning
If you have requests, get them in soon
Faustus posted today at 3:45 p.m.
I need a couple Staminas. I’ll grab you the mats.
Leelea posted today at 3:57 p.m.
Thanks F
I’ll let you know when they’re ready
This kind of readying makes me think of a camp before a hunt. Packing up our supplies, sharpening our weapons. I have my prey in my sights. I already know I’ll be able to take it down.
The login queue moves quickly. When the game loads in, a new cutscene starts.
We pan down the face of an impressive skyscraper lined with burning purple lights: Van Der Gelt Tower.
A voiceover—Emery’s voiceover—begins.
Fenhallow Academy has a motto. Seeking order in chaos. As dreamhunters, we bring order to the world by defeating the chaos of nightmares.
The skyscraper goes down, down, down, its black windows revealing nothing of the interior. The camera speeds up as it goes, and images start to appear in the reflections on the glass.
Dreambreakers are born of chaos. They don’t play by the rules of the waking world or the Dream. The rest of us are at the mercy of their whims.
The flashes of light and dark in the windows resolve themselves into different characters, there long enough to recognize them in moments of triumph and loss, and gone.
But I’ve seen enough of our world now. I know dreambreakers aren’t the scariest people out there. Seeking order in chaos? No—we are chaos. All of us Children of Hypnos. We fear ourselves above all, and what do we do with the things we fear? We hunt them.
Just when it feels like we’re descending into the pits of the earth, the camera finds the base of the tower. The entrance yawns open, a dark portal to the unknown. Emery stands with her back to us in her long black jacket, with her new hat and long braid.
I am tired of fear.
The shot closes in on her back, on her head. She turns, looks straight down the camera with those cold blue eyes.
Time to hunt.
Then she runs into Van Der Gelt Tower and disappears.
The screen goes black. I load into the game where I left Raven before, on the Fenhallow campus, but a few pop-ups appear letting me know about Dreambreaker changes and new features.
These have circulated on the CoH Online website and fan forums for weeks.
Alissa would’ve had guides ready for them.
I’m sure someone will take her place as the top guide writer now that she’s gone, but the thought is a thorn burrowing into my chest. She should have been here to see this.
She should have gotten to write the guides.
For a moment, I entertain the thought of taking over where she left off. I’ll write the guides. I’ll become the new Briory, preserve her memory.
It’s a bad idea. I’d rather be doing the thing than writing about it, and the thought of spending that time consolidating data instead of playing the game sounds terrible.
I wish I was as good as Alissa had been at anything.
It was annoying, sometimes, how she always seemed better than me.
She was faster in track, had better grades, did more extracurriculars, had more friends.
She was skinnier, prettier, funnier, nicer.
She had more money. She had both parents.
She was probably better at CoH than me too.
A surge of anger rises in me. It’s so sudden and unexpected that I have to catch my breath.
What right did she have to hate her perfect life so much? How dare she kill herself under the unbearable weight of all her gifts and opportunities?
My own thoughts repulse me.