Cleo returned the woman's smile with a hesitant one of her own and entered through the door held ajar.
The room she arrived in was a long rectangle, just like the shape of the building suggested. It was only dimly lit by a circular ceiling light in the center, revealing a standing desk at one end and an odd glass chamber at the other. Of the surface of the desk was a pad resembling some sort of tablet set into it, the screen black and dormant. There was nothing else in the room except a door on the left wall that stood shut, faint light streaming through the crack near the floor.
Cleo took a couple steps into the room before turning back to the woman who had greeted her. She stood a couple inches taller than Cleo, with perfect posture that made Cleo self-conscious of her own slumped shoulders. The woman clicked the door closed behind her and the room darkened further.
She turned to Cleo with that same bright and kind smile. Despite the darkness, Cleo thought the woman's eyes seemed to glow like dim amber fireflies. She held her hand out. "I'm Remilda. You can call me Remie."
Cleo shook her hand, feeling the cool touch of multiple metal rings adorning Remie's fingers. "It's, uh, good to meet you," Cleo said.
Remie let her fingers linger in Cleo's before pulling away, running her hand through her thick, pale, almost white hair that fell just past her shoulders. "Look, before we start I just wanted to say something," Remie said, her voice light and less formal than Cleo had heard it the other day. "I know everything you're hearing must be a lot to process, and just so you know- I know we just met two seconds ago," she admitted with a chuckle, "-but if you need to talk, you can always come to me. I'll do my best to answer any questions you have. I know there are a lot."
Cleo was slightly taken aback by Remie's straight-forward nature. She was also grateful to have someone offer to answer her insane amount of random questions. For some reason, Cleo just knew she meant it. Cleo trusted Remie. Against her better judgement, she found herself completely trusting this person who she knew nothing about.
Cleo smiled back, more sure this time. "That's an understatement. But thanks, really."
"Of course," Remie answered. She turned and glanced at the glass compartment nestles into the far side of the room. "We should get started. I'm gonna be your... mentor, I suppose, for the week."
Cleo eyed the odd contraption warily. It already gave her the creeps. "For what, exactly?"
"Well," Remie said, strolling over to the desk with the screen, "I dictate from here what goes on when you're in there," she pointed back at the glass box.
"Okay..." Cleo said slowly, still not understanding what was going on.
"Like a simulation, for practice."
"Practice..." Cleo mused. "Practicing what?"
"Fighting the Alumarian."
Remie must have read the shock on Cleo's face as clearly as if it were written in sharpie across her forehead.
"I'm so sorry, I just assumed someone gave you more information, that's my fault."
Cleo didn't know what to say. Of course no one explained what she'd be doing, because throwing her into the deep end with a blindfold on seemed like a fantastic idea. It wasn't Remie's fault. It was Maedrian's fault, it was Cassian's fault, it was the fault of everyone else who had the chance to explain.
"No, they didn't. It's not your fault, I mean, surely someone should of... I don't know what I expected but..." Cleo stared at the glass box with newfound terror. The seemingly harmless chamber now looked like a prison. "But it wasn't that. Not on my first day."
"We'll start easy," Remie assured her. "You won't be fighting real demons, of course, just exercises to get you more comfortable in the dream world."
"The dream world," Cleo repeated in a daze, her eyes still glued to that box. She didn't notice Remie had walked over to her until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Cleo looked over to see Remie's face, concern and understanding clear in her expression.
"Do you need a moment? It's overwhelming, I know. It was for me, and I knew this world existed my whole life."
"For you? What do you mean?" Cleo asked. "This training stuff?"
Remie let her hand slip off Cleo's shoulder. "All Champions have to go through it. Controlling dreams, facing your fears, all of it." She looked at the far side of the room almost wistfully. "It's exhilarating and exhausting at the same time."
"What are they like?"
"What are what like?"
"The... demons," Cleo clarified. "When you really face them."
"It depends, I suppose."
"On?"
"What you're scared of." Remie sighed. "It's a long explanation. Let's sit down."
The room had no chairs or other furniture, so they sat on the ground in the center with their back against the wall, side by side. Cleo drew her knees up to her chest, crossing her arms over them and waiting for the lesson to begin.
Remie stayed silent for a whole minute, staring off into space, contemplating how exactly to explain.
"Okay, so there are eight basic physical fears," Remie began finally, crossing her long legs at the ankle. "Each has a symbol, and they represent the most common thing people fear. The first is bugs, insects, creepy crawlies," she said with a grin.
Then she did something that made Cleo's jaw hang open.
Remie lifted her finger into the air and drew a symbol with her index finger. Wherever her finger moved, gold light created lines that hung in midair until the lingering glow formed the symbol; six lines, three on each side, protruding from an oval in the center.
"Creative design, huh?" Remie asked with a chuckle.
Cleo was too stunned to reply right away. She stared at that symbol until the gold light faded from the air like a firework drifting down to Earth. She found her voice again and managed, "The eight symbols. We saw eight symbols on eight doors, that day we found Cassian."
Remie's smile faded, as if a bitter memory had found its way to the front of her mind. "That must have been their containment hall. One of them, anyways."
Cleo thought back to her time before they reached Cassian and the prison, trying to recall the rest of the symbols without success. "What are the rest of them?"
"The second is claustrophobia, fear of tight spaces," she continued. This time she drew a simple square with the gold light in the same spot in the air.
"Third is water, so fear of drowning, the ocean, et cetera." She drew two squiggly lines, one on top of the other.
If Cleo wasn't sure before, she definitely was now. These were the same symbols from those impenetrable steel doors.
"Fourth is fear of heights." The symbol was the top and side lines of a square.
"Next, fear of natural disasters, tornadoes, earthquakes, whatever." Three lines of decreasing length set on top of a single, long line.
"The fear of the dark." A filled-in circle.
"The fear of open space, getting lost, that sort of thing." A simple horizontal line.
"And finally, fear of disease." A plus sign.
When the final symbol faded like stardust, Cleo asked, "So, there are certain demons that are each type of fear?"
"Exactly. Our lesson isn't over, though. There's more, because physical fears aren't enough."
"Of course," Cleo grumbled.
"There are emotional fears, more abstract things. It isn't always super clear what they are, though. Fear of failure and disappointment are the most popular ones, I'm pretty sure."
"Popular?"
Remie laughed, making Cleo feel slightly better despite the morbid subject matter. "I just meant we run into them the most. I guess that makes them the least and most popular at the same time."
Cleo grinned, then, dreading the answer, asked, "Is that all of them?"
Remie shook her head, confirming Cleo's suspicions. "There's one more, the worst kind, but also the most rare." She paused, looking away from Cleo and out into space. "We call them Memory Mares, because they take your worst memories, the worst experiences you've ever had, and throws them back in your face. They make you relive the worst moments of your life."
A tense silence filled the space. Cleo thought about her own experience with Memory Mares, the one lurking in the hallways of the endless maze. She also wondered about what Remie was thinking about. The way she spoke about them, described them in such detail, Cleo was almost positive she had run into them before. Before she lost her nerve, Cleo spoke.
"Have you ever...?" she asked quietly, letting the question hang in the air, unfinished but clear.
"Yeah, I have. Not something I want to remember," Remie replied in a tone that made Cleo instantly decide no to push any further.
Taking a deep breath, Remie pushed herself to her feet. She held out a hand to Cleo. "Come on, we better get some training in today, now that you know the basics."