Did this still count as a dream?
As Ruger looked at the giggling Little Regna, that question still rose instinctively in his mind.
He had successfully found the supposed source of the anomaly: the little girl beside him. She was the one guiding Aisijin in her dreams. She was a thoughtful little thing, too, just like her furry father. Her special nature had allowed her to sense that Aisijin was in trouble, so she had begun controlling when she fell asleep, sleeping alongside Aisijin to help her in the dream. She was as brave and kind as her old father.
Ruger felt deeply reassured, but on second thought, something was wrong. He had seemingly been searching for the source of the anomaly, yet upon finding it, he discovered that it was not the true source at all. At most, Little Regna had helped bring about Aisijin's transformation and acted as her guardian. The real anomaly had to be that dream-or, more precisely, the Castle within it.
Or perhaps the impossibly vast Castle and the dream were one and the same.
But as Aisijin described it, this had already gone beyond the bounds of an ordinary dream. It seemed to be the influence of nightmare power, yet it was not the Nightmare World Ruger remembered, either. Some details in her account suggested that the place was affected by Aisijin's will. For instance, when she became desperately hungry, she decided that the table was edible. Innocent as she was, she acted on the thought, and the brave kobold girl began sinking her teeth into things inside the Castle. After some experimentation, she really did manage to eat them.
The enormous Castle was trapping her, but her will was also influencing the Castle.
All these details differed greatly from Ruger's impression of the