The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 6: The Trial of Klaus Warwick

Klaus shuffled to the chair, gripping the backrest with his bound hands so he didn't fall when he tried to stop beside it. He was helped into the seat by his two dreamhunter guards.

"Klaus Warwick," Grandpa Al said, standing tall above the judges' table with his glasses flashing in the light and his voice as cold as steel, "You are accused of stealing sleeping sand from the Hypnos State, abandoning your duties as a dreamhunter, threatening Hypnos State agents, colluding with doppelgängers, and attacking Fenhallow Academy. During this questioning, you may correct any false statements you may have made, and you will incur no consequences. However, if you are found speaking falsehoods during this trial, you will be held in contempt. Do you understand?"

"Oh, yes," Klaus slurred, leaning forward in his seat, "and I'd like to start by saying I am guilty of all of those things. Except attacking Fenhallow Academy. That one was your fault."

From somewhere in the back of the room, Marcia said, very quietly, "Goddammit..."

Temper burst out laughing. Moxie looked amused. Ares rolled his eyes, and Grandpa Al stood where he was, mouth slightly open. The jury glanced among themselves but remained quiet.

"Well, go on," Moxie said, apparently also on the verge of laughter. "Explain yourself."

It took Klaus too long to answer, like he didn't have the words right away. When he did speak, he sounded lucid. For the most part.

"I definitely stole sleeping sand. You already heard that from...Emery. I stole it from here so that I didn't have to skin it off of dreams myself, because I couldn't go through the appropriate channels to do it and I'd be taking it from unwilling...participants.

"I did threaten an agent of the Hypnos State—Emery—sort of? I told her to stop looking for me, because it was dangerous. I was keeping an eye out for her doppelgänger at the same time and didn't want them to cross paths. I also didn't want her to follow me, because I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not the safest person to be around.

"I did abandon my duties as a dreamhunter. There's no getting out of that. I didn't like what I saw in the Hypnos State administration and I didn't like the restrictions they were putting on dreamhunters, and also I saw a lot of discrepancies between what the State told us and what I found—or didn't find—in the...the databases. So I left."

He took a deep breath. "Some of the discrepancies were about doppelgängers. I said I wouldn't lie to you all, so I want you to know that I find what you do and what orders you take very shady. I find the whole dreamkiller coup to be very shady, poorly documented, and generally unfounded. Why are you...why are you so afraid of dreamseekers? Who knows! They were siding with doppelgängers to keep power over dreamhunters? Seems like the dreamkillers haven't done much to help the dreamhunters out, either, so I'm not sure what a coup accomplished beyond shifting power. I really question...what the State President, the advisors, and the Ward Directors think they're doing by keeping knowledge about doppelgängers under wraps. Made even more questionable by the fact that you're stripping the curriculum, so the upcoming dreamhunters have even less protection against their doppelgängers. No knowledge of sleeping sand? Or of the Dream? They don't even have a proper Dream Theory professor. They don't learn combat with dreamforms until their last year of school. I was here three years ago, so I know. They didn't want to teach me, either. But I learned on my own, the way I learned everything else.

"And the charge of attacking the Academy—if you're talking about the first time I came here, on the night I was captured, I did not attack anyone. Emery Ashworth had been poisoned by one of my nightmares while inside my dream, and I came to make sure she'd been healed correctly. I tried to escape without harming anyone and was caught.