He returned to the sanctuary and spoke with Rosaline, remembering to hand over the cursed ring he’d been carrying on his person. After some examination and divinations regarding the item’s memory, Ulrich learned the effects of the ring: Grant the user night vision, with a bane of making their eyes weak to sunlight. For Ulrich who possessed the Blessing of Night, it was useless.
So he handed it to Rosaline, obtaining over a hundred merit, and using that merit to borrow an artifact from the Repository with Freddy. Specifically, a amethyst bracelet. This amethyst bracelet possessed one boon and bane according to its memory:
Sleeper’s Bracelet: A bracelet imbued with the spirituality of a Dreamweaver. Created from hemp string and small amethyst crystals.
The effects were relatively simple.
Increase a wearer speed and cognition, while making the wearer susceptible to losing their sense of direction. To Ulrich, who can perform divination directly in the dream scape, this bane wasn’t that severe. Given that he didn’t move recklessly.
Ulrich returned home as evening deepened into night, carrying a small velvet pouch from the Sanctuary's Repository. Alone in his terraced house with curtains drawn and doors locked, he prepared for the scrying with careful preparation.
First, the spirituality barrier. He moved through his small living space, placing chalk marks at cardinal points, connecting them with lines that glowed faintly under his enhanced vision. The barrier wouldn't stop physical intrusion, but it would prevent supernatural interference from disrupting his trance state. A minor set up, but essential.
Next, the totem.
Ulrich sat cross-legged in the center of the barrier and focused his spirituality inward, shaping it with careful intent. The form he chose was simple, a bronze hairpin identical to one his sister, Zhou Mei, had worn in his previous life. The memory provided emotional anchor, and the hairpin's simple design made it easy to maintain during extended scrying.
The spirituality condensed, taking shape in his palm. A bronze metal that existed more in concept than reality, solid enough to serve as his return ticket from the dream realm. If anything went wrong, if he became lost or attacked, the totem would pull his astral body back to his physical form.
Ulrich secured the hairpin to his coat, feeling its weight settle against his chest like a second heartbeat.
Then he withdrew the Sleeper’s Bracelet from its velvet pouch.
The artifact was beautiful in the way dangerous things often were. Seven amethyst crystals set in silver, each stone perfectly cut to catch and refract light into purple fractals. When Ulrich clasped it around his wrist, the crystals pulsed once with inner luminescence.
His perception immediately sharpened, thoughts accelerating with an uncomfortable clarity. The bracelet's effect on cognition was instant and disorienting, like drinking too much coffee while simultaneously losing track of which direction was forward.
Finally, he retrieved Jeremiah's tattered shirt from his coat pocket.
The fabric still carried some residual spiritual impressions. This would be his anchor in the dream sea, the connection that would guide him to the corresponding bubble showing Jeremiah's meeting with the mysterious mediator.
Ulrich arranged himself more comfortably, the shirt clutched in his left hand, and began the incantation in Hermes. The words carried weight, pressing against reality's fabric as he spoke them aloud.
His consciousness shifted, physical awareness fading as his astral body separated from flesh and bone.
The transition was abrupt, like stepping through a doorway into a different world entirely.
The boundless dream sea spread before him in all its incomprehensible vastness.
Ulrich opened his eyes to find himself floating above churning waters that stretched to every horizon. Fog layered the scene in gray and silver, obscuring distance until the sea and sky merged into indistinct sameness. Waves crashed below, producing thunderous sounds that felt more like memory than actual noise.
The salty scent was familiar, identical to Belham's harbor, but Ulrich knew this wasn't truly an ocean. His mind was filling gaps, translating the dream realm's incomprehensible nature into something human consciousness could process. The "water" might be raw dream-stuff, or collective unconsciousness made manifest, or something else entirely that lacked proper terminology.
He checked his possessions immediately.
The bronze hairpin remained secured to his astral form's chest, pulsing with reassuring warmth. The Amethyst bracelet circled his wrist, crystals glowing with active light. And in his left hand, Jeremiah's fabric remained solid and real, its spiritual impressions intact.
Ulrich allowed himself a moment to marvel at the environment. Below him, countless bubbles rose from the ocean's depths, each one containing scenes that played out in miniature. He could see people, places, moments frozen or moving depending on the bubble's nature. Some rose quickly and popped almost immediately. Others drifted upward with glacial slowness, reaching toward the gray clouds above before finally dissipating.
Each bubble represented a dream, a memory, a possibility. The totality of human consciousness expressing itself through symbolic representation.
Movement here happened through flight, or rather, through willing his astral body in specific directions. Ulrich tested the sensation, drifting left and right experimentally. The Amethyst bracelet's effect became immediately apparent. His movement was noticeably faster, more responsive to intent. But his sense of direction wavered uncomfortably, making it difficult to judge relative positions.
He needed to focus.
Ulrich closed his eyes and felt for the connection, the thread linking Jeremiah's fabric to its corresponding bubble somewhere in this vast sea. His spirituality responded, creating a golden beam visible only to his perception. The light originated from the fabric in his hand and stretched across impossible distance toward a specific point in the dream ocean.
There. Far to his right, perhaps miles away, a bubble that contained the scene he sought.
Ulrich willed himself forward, following the golden thread with determined focus.
Navigation through the dream sea proved immediately challenging. Bubbles rose constantly from below, their trajectories unpredictable. Some moved slowly enough to avoid easily. Others accelerated without warning, shooting upward like projectiles that would intersect his path if he didn't adjust course.
The Amethyst bracelet's speed enhancement helped considerably. Ulrich found he could dodge more quickly, his thoughts processing bubble movements fractionally faster than normal cognition would allow. But the disorientation remained constant, making it difficult to judge whether he was actually moving toward the golden thread or spiraling in confused circles.
He forced himself to trust the thread, using it as his only reliable reference point.
Minutes passed, though time felt uncertain here. Ulrich maintained steady progress, weaving between rising bubbles while keeping the golden beam centered in his vision. His enhanced perception cataloged details obsessively. Bubbles of different sizes, some no larger than his fist, others massive enough to contain entire buildings. Colors ranging from clear to opaque, some glowing with inner light, others dark and foreboding.
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And beneath the surface, movement.
Ulrich's danger sense flared occasionally, drawing his attention to shapes that swam through the dream ocean's depths. Lesser dream creatures, entities that inhabited this realm permanently. Most were small, barely visible. But some were larger, their shadows suggesting significant mass moving beneath the churning waves.
He maintained altitude, staying well above the surface while continuing forward.
The golden thread grew brighter as he approached his destination, which meant he was making genuine progress despite the disorientation. Ulrich allowed himself cautious optimism.
Then something burst from the ocean below.
The creature emerged with explosive force, water that wasn't truly water cascading from its form as it launched itself toward Ulrich's position. His enhanced vision cataloged impossible anatomy in the fraction of a second available.
A body like a massive shark, easily twenty feet long, covered in scales that gleamed with oily iridescence. But instead of fins, it possessed wings. Actual feathered wings sprouting from where pectoral fins should be, each one beating with powerful strokes that propelled the thing through air as easily as water.
Its head was wrong, a nightmare fusion of shark and bird. The mouth stretched impossibly wide, filled with rows of serrated teeth. But the eyes were avian, bright yellow with slit pupils that tracked Ulrich with predatory intelligence. And from its throat emerged sounds that belonged to neither shark nor bird, a screeching-gurgling hybrid that set Ulrich's teeth on edge.
The shark-bird covered the distance between ocean surface and Ulrich's altitude in seconds.
Ulrich's first instinct was flight. He willed his astral body higher, trying to gain altitude advantage. The Amethyst bracelet responded, accelerating his movement with supernatural speed.
But the creature was faster.
It climbed after him with powerful wing beats, closing the gap effortlessly. Ulrich realized with sinking certainty that he couldn't outrun it. And even if he could temporarily escape, the thing would simply follow and attack when he was most vulnerable during the actual scrying of his target bubble.
Better to face it now, while he had room to maneuver.
Ulrich stopped climbing and turned to confront the creature directly.
Dark Arrows manifested around him, multiple shadow weapons forming in rapid succession. He launched them at the approaching shark-bird with enhanced speed, the bracelet's cognition boost allowing him to aim with greater precision than normal.
The first volley struck true, shadow spears piercing through the creature's wings and torso.
But they passed through without effect.
No physical damage, no disruption to its flight. The Dark Arrows simply phased through the shark-bird's form as though striking empty air.
Ulrich's stomach dropped as understanding crystallized.
This wasn't the physical realm. The creature wasn't made of flesh and blood but dream-stuff, spiritual essence that didn't interact with his shadow constructs the same way material targets would. And more critically, there was no sunlight here. No bright illumination to cast proper shadows that his Shadowmancer abilities could target.
The dream sea existed in perpetual twilight, diffuse gray light coming from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Perfect conditions for rendering most of his combat abilities useless.
The shark-bird lunged, jaws opening impossibly wide.
Ulrich used Shadow Step instinctively, sinking into the faint shadow his own astral body cast and emerging several meters away. The creature's teeth snapped on empty space, momentum carrying it past his previous position.
But Shadow Step had felt wrong, sluggish and imprecise compared to its normal execution. The lack of proper shadows weakened the technique significantly.
Ulrich's mind raced through options while the shark-bird wheeled around for another attack. He couldn't run. Couldn't use most of his offensive capabilities. His physical enhancement from Blessing of Night might not even function properly in astral form.
Then his gaze fell on the dream bubbles drifting nearby.
They glowed with inner light, each one a miniature sun casting illumination in specific directions. And where there was light, there could be shadow.
An idea formed with desperate speed.
Ulrich willed himself toward the nearest large bubble, a massive sphere easily thirty feet in diameter that glowed with warm golden radiance. He positioned himself so the bubble was between him and the ocean surface below, creating a cone of shadow that stretched downward like a searchlight beam.
The shark-bird attacked again, wings beating with terrible speed.
Ulrich manifested Shadow Thread and aimed not at the creature but at the shadow cone below. The threads shot downward, anchoring to the shadow with greater stability than they'd shown moments before. Then he pulled, using the threads like grappling hooks to yank himself downward and sideways in one fluid motion.
The shark-bird missed by inches, its teeth clicking together with audible force.
But now Ulrich had positioning. He was inside the shadow cone, surrounded by darkness cast by the glowing bubble above. And in this concentrated shadow, his abilities regained their potency.
Shadow Thread erupted from his fingertips in greater volume, multiple strands weaving through the air toward the wheeling shark-bird. The creature tried to evade, but Ulrich had learned its movement patterns during those initial exchanges. He anticipated the dodge, placed his threads where the creature would be rather than where it was.
The threads struck true, wrapping around the shark-bird's wings and torso.
Then came the critical test. Puppet Mastery activated, the talent that enhanced his control over anything qualifying as a "puppet." He focused his intent, pulling at the threads with spirituality-enhanced force.
The shark-bird's form flickered, its movements becoming erratic as Ulrich's control attempted to override its autonomy. Not complete dominance, the creature fought back with considerable strength, but enough disruption to create openings.
Ulrich manifested a Dark Arrow in spear form, the weapon more stable now that he was operating within concentrated shadow. He drove the spear toward the shark-bird's center mass, targeting what he hoped was its spiritual core.
The weapon struck, and this time it didn't phase through harmlessly.
The shark-bird shrieked, its hybrid voice climbing to painful frequencies. The spear had found purchase, disrupting the dream creature's cohesion in ways his previous attacks couldn't.
Ulrich didn't give it time to recover. He manifested more spears, launching them in rapid succession while maintaining the Shadow Thread binding. Each impact destabilized the creature further, its form beginning to fragment like a bubble stretched too thin.
Finally, with a sound like tearing fabric, the shark-bird exploded into wisps of dream-stuff that dissipated rapidly.
Silence returned, broken only by the distant crashing of waves below.
Ulrich floated in the shadow cone, breathing heavily despite his astral body not requiring actual respiration. The fight had been brief but intense, pushing his abilities to their limits while forcing creative problem-solving under pressure.
Then he felt it, the familiar sensation of his Vital Rune absorbing lesser runes from the defeated creature. Energy flowed inward, filling his reservoir with measurable progress. When the absorption completed, Ulrich estimated he'd gained approximately five percent advancement.
From fifteen percent to twenty percent total. One fifth of the way toward Rank 3.
The satisfaction was immediate and substantial. Five percent progress from a single encounter, the kind of advancement that would normally require hours of systematic hunting in the Shadow Realm. If the dream sea contained more creatures like this, it represented a potentially valuable cultivation resource.
Though the risks remained considerable.
Ulrich checked his bronze hairpin totem, confirming it remained intact and functional. The Amethyst bracelet still pulsed with active enchantment. And Jeremiah's fabric maintained its golden thread, pointing toward his original destination.
He allowed himself a moment of dark humor, speaking aloud to the empty dream sea.
"At least the Leviathan hasn't shown up yet."
The words hung in the air with uncomfortable weight, and Ulrich immediately regretted the casual invocation. Tempting fate in a realm where thoughts could manifest as reality seemed spectacularly unwise.
He willed himself back into motion, leaving the shadow cone behind as he resumed following the golden thread. The target bubble was closer now, perhaps only half the original distance remaining.
Ulrich increased his speed, the Amethyst bracelet responding with enhanced acceleration. Dream bubbles continued rising around him, and he navigated between them with practiced efficiency. His danger sense remained active, monitoring for additional creatures that might emerge from below.
But the ocean remained relatively calm, no more shark-birds launching themselves toward his position.
The golden thread grew brighter with each passing minute, its terminus finally visible as a specific bubble among thousands. Ulrich could see it now, a medium-sized sphere with faint gray coloration, drifting upward at moderate speed.
Inside it, barely visible at this distance, human figures moved through what looked like an interior space.
Jeremiah's meeting with the ritual's distributor. The scene that would reveal connections to either the Twilight Order or One Eye Covenant, assuming Ulrich's theories were correct.
He accelerated further, closing the final distance while maintaining vigilant awareness of his surroundings.
The dream sea stretched endlessly in all directions, its vastness both awe-inspiring and terrifying. Ulrich was a tiny speck of consciousness navigating an ocean of collective dreams, hunting for specific moments among infinite possibilities.
But he was close now. Close enough to see details in the target bubble's interior. Close enough to complete his scrying and extract the information that might connect seemingly disparate cases into coherent conspiracy.
Ulrich raised his hand, prepared to touch the bubble's surface and immerse himself in its contained scene.
Just a little further.