“With that,” said the King, “I believe you’ve received all the knowledge required to make an informed decision.”

  With one fluid movement that made his technicolor sleeve come alive with vibrancy, he raised his arm straight out in front of him and opened his palm upward. Lucy expected the clouds to gather above his palm, but to her surprise, light streaked in from countless directions, seemingly from every corner of the world, converging on a spot that was much closer to her—a mere arm’s length from her own face, although it was just high enough to be out of arm’s reach. This convergence of light, originally a brilliant sphere resembling a miniature sun, gently reshaped itself into a thinner, much longer shape, with a line running perpendicular about halfway up the length. Above it, the top half was thin as a sheet, and at the very top the two edges came together to form a visually-striking vertex, a point of convergence so sharp and so unyielding that it could cleave the world in two.

  It was a sword.

  A sword with a light but rich blue handle, like the impression of an azure sky painted along the shadows of clouds. The blade—long and fiercely shining and only as wide as Lucy’s arm—was not blue, but it was engulfed in a flickering blue flame that was very, very slight, like a visualization of a soul, or perhaps an aura. Taken all together, the sword was at once a perfectly-condensed representation of the vast sky that stretched out in all directions, and a rejection of that very same vastness with its gleaming, razor-sharp tip pointing in a single, absolute direction.

  “This is your Ideal,” said the King. His voice seemed to emanate from the sword, in much the same way as the soft blue glow it radiated. “It can be a weapon or a tool, a beacon of never-ending conviction, or a dear friend who is always at your side. It is your will to change the very fabric of reality, made manifest. Should you take it and drop it down into the lands below, its light will fade, swallowed up by the world as it is now, and without its blinding brilliance, you will experience the remainder of your Final Dream in peace. Contrarily…”

  The King raised his arm, slowly, as if he were a gigantic monolith animated with grandeur, and pointed straight up, the wind kicking up with such intensity that Lucy had to brush her hair out of her eyes to see the King’s figure, larger than ever.

  “Should you take it and raise the blade skyward,” said the King, “you will be reborn as the Dream Knight long dormant within your soul.”

  The wind rose to a near gale as his words echoed through the vicinity, through all of the skies themselves—and then vanished. Even the King’s robes, which had been shifting through the full spectrum of colours as the fabric moved in the breeze and caught sunlight at different angles, now settled on a single static colour: a rich blue of deep azure with slightest hints of turquoise, blending in nearly perfectly with sky as if to make his presence meld into the world and disappear entirely. When the echo of his voice faded away, it was as if the only ones existing in this world were Lucy and her Ideal.

  She looked up at the sword, still floating miraculously, still engulfed in a faint blue aura along the blade. It was close enough for her to study in detail, but far enough for her arms to try and fail and only catch dead air. It was a small distance, but a meaningful one, as Lucy was overwhelmed by the experience of gazing with a mixture of yearning and frustration at her Ideal, at the one thing that promised her the ability to do what she never thought she could, floating just out of reach.

  Her hand was already out in front of her, reaching up and blocking part of the sun, when she became conscious of how the silence became more than absolute. All that could be heard in this moment was herself. Not just her breathing, which she consciously tried to keep even and steady, but the very sound of her existence, faintly ringing out like a silver bell deep within. It was fleetingly faint, in contrast to how Lucy’s figure was starkly conspicuous against the blue sky, but in this absolute silence the ringing could be heard with such clarity that it became a voice, a collection of words, a single question asked over and over:

  “What shall I do?”

  Lucy, strangely, was not fazed from hearing it. Perhaps it was the surrealness of it all, but she knew immediately that the right thing to do—the only thing she could do—was take the sword floating before her, for it was only when she had the sword in her hands that she could come to the decision-making crossroads urged on by the sounds of her existence.

  But it was too far out of reach; the small distance from earlier hadn’t been a mere illusion, conjured by her disbelief and lack of confidence. No matter how far she strained her arm, her hands only closed around the empty air just under the sword’s handle.

  It was this precise moment that she had wanted to avoid: of reaching out, trying with all her might, and falling short, falling short despite putting in all she could. It was a quiet, internal sort of defeat, and yet it carried a weighted world of gravitas, as there was the sense that she could fall any moment, fall through the endless sky and see the sword, her own Ideal, become ever further out of her grasp.

  But Lucy wasn’t falling. She was high up in the air, higher than she could have ever imagined possible for herself—and it was because of a cloud platform resting beneath her feet, letting her take foot where she would normally have fallen.

  And that platform hadn’t appeared on its own. She had willed it to be so.

  And if she had done it before, she could do it again.

  Looking down at where her feet nestled into the fluffy white of the clouds, then up to where her Ideal shone with all the marvellous ethereality of a legendary sword, she commanded in her mind that the ground beneath her feet would rise, and that the distance between her outstretched hand and the sword’s handle would diminish. And when she began rising—she knew she would, this time—it was gentle and firm and seemed to come from everywhere beneath her, as if the wind or even the world itself were carrying her.

  The handle’s marble surface was cool to the touch when Lucy finally wrapped her fingers around it. Despite all of the build-up with the King’s words and her struggle to reach it, the sword didn’t feel any different from how it literally looked: the handle fit snugly into Lucy’s hand, and moving the sword about felt light and painstakingly ordinary, almost like the toy swords she had waved around with Thomas as children, if not for the more exquisite texture and fitting of the handle as well as the greater heft and weight due to the blade being made not of plastic but real, sharp, purposeful metal. As she waved the sword around, one thing was clear.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It would be easy to drop. Or easy to raise.

  The ease with which she could make her decision made it far from easy; if anything, it made the dilemma infinitely more difficult. It was as if she were floating in zero gravity in a perfectly empty void, the only things within it being herself, her grip on the sword, and her sword-wielding arm’s movements. With all of existence narrowing in on her actions, the thought of raising her Ideal toward the sky, of christening herself a Dream Knight, of daring to even take the first step toward that possibility—all of it weighed down on her soul, making the very intention of raising the sword impossible under the heaviness of it all.

  But it wasn’t heavy.

  And if it was the first step she was afraid of—well, she had already taken many first steps, whether out of the depths of the ocean, or onto the empty air of the open sky. Every time she couldn’t reach something, she had reached it by not only believing she could, but by believing the world would yield to her will. And she had done that again just now in order to reach the sword and have this dilemma in the first place.

  Lucy closed her eyes, smiling as she accepted that for all she could chastise and loathe herself for, she must have something undeniably right within her in order to have made it to this point. The moment she acknowledged this, her decision was clear.

  Lucy brought the sword before her face with both hands, both to readjust her grip and to take in her reflection along the shining blade. She had never seen her face so determined before, so resolute. With this memory of her decisive self imprinted into the blade, she tightened both hands around the handle and, with barely any resistance, raised her Ideal up above her head as high as she could reach.

  The motion was quick and effortless, but it was in this easy uneventfulness that meaning and significance took hold, as the entire world now seemed to revolve around the gleaming blade above Lucy’s head. Then, all too suddenly, the sky faded away, its azure blanket giving way to different but familiar landscapes—and their rapid changes.

  Desolate desert dunes sprung alive with verdant forests and entire ecosystems of wildlife.

  The disparate heights of cubic structures levelled into a pleasingly even skyline, with the discordant cacophonies of ignorant laughter and pitiful screams re-harmonizing into quiet but content murmurs of reassurance.

  The lock with no keyhole came undone as if by an invisible force, the massive cage falling away as the countless stalks of wheat within escaped, spreading out in every direction to every corner of the world no matter how small.

  Endless screams from the bottomless pit cut off abruptly, becoming strained but determined grunts as those fallen people caught hold of the abyss’s edge to pull themselves up, then turn around and help others rise back up into the world as well.

  The sea, ever so large, ever so impenetrable in its successful inevitability, drained its levels away until homes and buildings and entire cities were no longer submerged, the busy, raucous, but ultimately beautiful hubbub of everyday human life returning to the vast lands beneath the clouds once more.

  And Lucy stood at the centre of all of this, her Ideal still raised skyward. At first, it had seemed she was simply watching these occurrences happen around her, but as the process of the world’s changes continued and sword grew ever brighter, ever heftier in her hands, it was clear:

  She was not a mere observer in all these changes, but its primary agent, its primary driver, its primary doer.

  And that was when the tears streamed down her cheeks, betraying the strength and confidence with which she upheld her Ideal. It was strange, it was overwhelming, and she still wasn’t sure if she believed all of it. But for the first time since perhaps her first breath, she felt at peace with her existence.

  She wanted to wipe at her eyes, but she couldn’t, for she feared that putting her Ideal down too soon would have negative consequences. As she stared out across the sky, the sun suddenly grew in size and intensity, blinding her for a moment. After blinking a few times, she found that her cheeks were now perfectly dry, as if the sun’s warmth had extended its hand to wipe the tears away. With her eyes dry and her vision re-adjusted, Lucy was able to see just in time as they approached her.

  The clouds, from seemingly every corner of the world, were fast approaching her.

  Again, she very nearly dropped her Ideal, this time out of shock. But she gripped it tightly above her head, even as the huge masses of clouds came within arm’s reach. As they drew closer still, they were no longer huge masses. Each cloud broke apart bit by bit, like a Lego figure being taken apart in the dreamiest, most gentle manner, with the pieces of white fluff all flowing to Lucy’s body. At first, they clung to Lucy’s pyjamas, but once every inch of the fabric had been covered, some of the cloud material gathered in a small area on her forehead and around the temples through to the back of her head, forming a ring. And at her back, more of the cloud material gathered in a long, thin, flowing form that extended from her the nape of her neck down to just above her ankles. Her feet, too, were covered in the soft bluish white.

  Lucy continued holding her pose through all of this, though she could not help remarking at the oddity of it. When the clouds moved and gathered it like this, it had always been in response to a command she had clearly defined. To have them move now of their own accord, and onto Lucy’s body no less, was as surprising as it was frightening. But, Lucy thought, perhaps they were responding to a command of hers, one that suffused her sub-conscious mind so completely that it slipped past the realm of conscious thought. It had to be a command that she should look like a knight, because now she was a knight.

  As soon as Lucy arrived at this conclusion, the King, who had been standing from afar and watching patiently the whole time, stretched out his hand in a sweeping upward motion that matched the way he had conjured the illustration of the Lattice of Dreams. This time, what emerged a foot or two before Lucy’s face were two grey storm clouds that immediately began pouring rain. The rain drops quickly gathered and held in place, forming a perfectly rectangular shape with round edges that matched Lucy’s height from head to toe. And then, through some other work of the King’s magic, this shape of water immediately froze into a block of ice, the clear, reflective surface being perfectly even and unblemished. The storm clouds dissipated into grey wisps that quickly faded, leaving before Lucy a thin sheet of ice so finely cut it looked like glass.

  A mirror of ice.

  Gazing at her reflection, Lucy was surprised to find that the cotton-like cloud material on her figure was no longer visible. In its place were a multitude of things that made Lucy’s eyes go wide, and then her heart soar. Gone were her pyjamas, replaced with a blue and white tunic patterned after sky-and-clouds. Underneath it was full silver chain mail, visible along her arms and legs with the chain links softly rattling in response to her movements. Golden yellow, gleaming like sunlight, adorned the epaulettes on her shoulders, the gauntlets protecting the lengths of her forearms, and the thick, sturdy boots that encased her feet and legs. Brilliant silver blessed her forehead, where a circlet was topped with a small insignia of the sun: yellow at the centre, with brilliant vermilion rays radiating out in the cardinal directions. In complement to all this gold and silver, a marvellously long cape fluttered at her back, its deep azure and indigo fabric being more than a little reminiscent of the sky that surrounded her, as if the world of her Final Dream had given a piece of itself to always remain at her back.

  Lucy stared at her reflection—the knight’s reflection—for a time that, to her, bordered on indefinite. At last, she brought the sword of her Ideal back down, holding it firmly at her side as in the stance of a proud warrior.

  “May all the bells of celebration ring out through this Dream and every one of your previous Dreams,” spoke the King, “for you, Lucy Lockhart, have assumed your long-awaited potential as a Dream Knight.”