Cryptic dreams, a haunted call

Deathly near a second downfall.

The dream started the same way it had on several previous occasions. Araynia woke from a series of fitful, disturbing visions to find herself floating suddenly in the middle of a lake.

The lake was vast, and silvery-blue, stretching out in every direction as far as she could see. Small waves lapped at her, rippling across the surface from a gentle breeze that washed over her skin; a cool, reassuring touch. She felt calm and serene, her thoughts soothed and focused on the pleasant sensations. Memories and worries were distant, forgotten.

Light sparkled across the surface of the water, but from what source she could not tell. There was no sun. Above her was an expanse of soft blue, slightly hazy with mist. But it did not appear to be the sky – there was a shifting pattern of light up there, like water reflecting off a high ceiling.

She gazed up at it, mildly curious, but not concerned. This place was wonderful. She wished that she could float here forever.

After awhile, she became aware that she was not alone.

She floated a few moments more, then sat up, on the surface of the water. Except that it was no longer water, but had become a smooth silver floor, reflective like a mirror. She ran her hand over it, looking down at her own image. Whoever it was that shared this place with her was approaching, she knew. She had seen him before, and he was not dangerous.

She waited, patiently.

He appeared soundlessly, as a thickening of the mist in one direction which resolved itself gradually into the form of a tall man. He walked towards her with ghostly footsteps that made no noise or reflection on the silver floor. She could make out no definite details other than his elegant limbs, vague suggestion of clothing and long, waist-length hair that flowed out from him like tendrils of mist. He glowed faintly, like sunlight through fog, and the only features of his face were his eyes, which were like blue holes…

His eyes!

Apprehension fluttered through her. She had not seen his eyes before, and something about them scared her, caused the calm atmosphere to waver…

Getting to her feet, she took a step backwards.

He stopped and stared at her with those blank eyes, like chips of sky.

Something is different, she thought. This dream is not like the others…

She had believed he meant her no harm, but now was beginning to doubt. This place was so quiet and peaceful that she could not imagine anything bad happening here, and yet… she sensed something dark pressing on the edge of her consciousness, a kind of urgency…

She looked around quickly, but no shadows penetrated the smooth floor or blue ceiling. No one was here save herself and the ethereal man.

Then she heard a sound – a peculiar echoing whisper. It came from all around her, and she thought she could almost make out words, but couldn’t understand them.

The ghost in front of her shook his head slowly, the movement blurry, and he lowered his head, seemingly in sadness. The strange sound faded into silence. Then, after a few moments, he half-turned away from her, lifting one graceful arm and pointing.

Araynia looked in that direction, but saw nothing: only the silver floor disappearing into blue mist.

She shook her head in confusion. I don’t understand!

The ghost looked back at her, still with his arm raised, and the echoing sound came again. She realised suddenly that he was trying to speak to her. Desperately, she concentrated on the noise, attempting to discern any kind of meaning from it, but the words slipped away before she could quite catch them.

I don’t know what you are trying to tell me, she said hopelessly.

The insubstantial figure stared at her for a long moment, and finally lowered his arm. The sound retreated again, echoes of echoes dying away into nothing.

His eyes glowed bright blue.

They unnerved her. Was he angry? She backed away further, suddenly not wishing to be in this place any longer…

And then, without warning, everything went black.

Araynia woke with a jerk, sitting up at once, gasping. For a few panicked seconds she thought the demon-wraiths were invading again, before realising, with a thundering heart, that she was neither dreaming or in any immediate danger.

She was sitting in her bed, in her room at Castle Whiteshadow.

Her nightclothes were drenched in sweat, causing her to shiver. She took deep breaths to compose herself. The dream had been stranger and more intense than usual. Almost… real.

Closing her eyes, she could see once again the silver-floored room and the spectral, cerulean-eyed man – clearly, sharply, as though he stood in front of her still. Shivering again, she opened her eyes quickly, feeling anxious and confused.

It was just a silly dream, she scolded herself. That apparition could not actually be the ghost of Lord Requar, attempting to communicate with her…

Then she noticed that her room was not completely dark. It was illuminated by a mysterious blue glow, coming from the dresser to her left.

She had set her pendant there before she went to bed. It was now shining with a strong blue radiance, more vivid than she had ever seen before. It cast faint coruscating patterns on the walls, very similar to the reflective light in her dream.

Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at it. What was going on? What did this mean?

She had assumed that the stone had guided her here to this castle. Both Ferrian and Arzath had told her it had simply picked up a lingering trace of Requar’s magic and meant nothing.

But…

In her dream, the ghostly figure had turned and pointed at something. Frowning, she tried to picture the layout of the castle. She had not explored much of it, mostly only the hallways and stairs between her room and the dining hall, as she was afraid of getting lost – or worse, running into Lord Arzath again.

If she visualised the ghost standing in front of her right here, in her room, he was pointing north-west. Her door was in that direction, but beyond it… if she kept going, she would end up outside the walls of the castle.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

She shook her head, baffled. It didn’t make any sense! Was there something out there, in the valley, that he wanted her to see?

What am I saying?? she said to herself. It was just a dream!

But her pendant was clearly glowing, and that was definitely not her imagination. Luca had witnessed it during their journey as well, and the Centaur could physically sense magic.

Regardless of the reality of her dreams, the stone’s magic was real enough, and was reacting to something.

Something nearby.

Throwing off the bed covers, she got up and picked up the pendant. The light intensified at her touch, blazing as bright as a candle. She blinked as it dazzled her eyes. Putting it around her neck, she grabbed her clothes and dressed quickly.

She had no idea what she was doing, going out in the middle of the night, when it was still raining, but she was doing it anyway…

Pushing out the door of her room before she could think better of it, she hurried down the corridor. She hesitated for a moment outside Luca’s room, but decided against telling him what she was doing. He might think she was crazy, or sleepwalking, and she could not be entirely sure that she wasn’t being led into terrible danger. It was magic, after all.

The thought that she was being lured into a trap slid briefly through her mind and was gone. Somehow she knew that she was not being guided to her death. The stone had led her out of peril. It had brought her here for a reason, an important purpose, meant only for her…

Hastening down the stairwell, she emerged a minute later in the entrance foyer.

It was shrouded in chilly dark shadows and silence. The night was deep and quiet: everyone else had gone to sleep hours ago.

The stairs swept grandly from the balcony before her, a wide, pale path bordered by ornate white balustrades tinged luminous blue by her pendant. She followed them down to the hall. Her boots echoed as she crossed, the light of her stone gleaming brilliantly on the polished marble floor. At the main doors she paused again, glancing behind her.

Then she raised her furry hood and slipped out into the drizzly night.

The waterfall surged out of its crevice in the mountain rock, given life and energy by the snow melting from the peaks above, pale and roaring in the darkness as it leapt two hundred feet to the river below. It was crowned with a green, grassy, flat-topped knoll, set against the sheer cliffs that made up the northernmost wall of the Sorcerer’s Valley. A single tree grew on the knoll; an ancient, twisted pine with clumps of green needles stubbornly clinging to the ends of its gnarled limbs. The branches leaned to one side in a kind of arch, and it was before this arch that a black figure knelt.

He did not face the mist-shrouded valley, nor Castle Whiteshadow, deep in slumber on the eastern side, but inwards, towards the water-streaked rocks. Here, sheltered beneath the outreaching arms of the pine tree was a beautiful gleaming sword hilt, rising from the ground like a cross. Two snakes, one black, the other white, twined around the base of the blade, their heads facing the ground.

This sword had belonged to his brother: it was the Sword of Healing.

Once, it had contained the power to renew and repair damage to any living thing – it had even banished trigon.

Even, as its final act, reversed Ferrian’s death.

It was one of the most potent artefacts of sorcery to have ever been created. It could have achieved many more wondrous things… if its wielder had not perished.

Requar certainly had changed the world, but not for the better. Arzath was now convinced that the heinous acts his brother had committed – including accidentally killing their mother and deliberately destroying the original School of Magical Studies – had been a result of his exposure to trigon. Requar hadn’t believed that; he had blamed himself, of course, and spent the rest of his life trying to make amends. A rift had formed in his personality, one that he hadn’t been able to reconcile. Arzath had tried desperately to repair it, but had failed.

Even if Ferrian hadn’t died and Requar had not felt it necessary to give up his own life to save the boy, he would have killed himself anyway. He had made at least two prior attempts before he succeeded.

Arzath stared at the cold, dark sapphires embedded in the hilt. Rain washed over him, soaking his hair, streaming off his black cloak. He clutched at the sodden grass in front of the Sword.

“Why?” he whispered. “Why am I not dead?”

The Sword did not reply.

“WHY AM I STILL HERE?!”

He screamed the words. They bounced off the cliffs and fled into the rain.

“YOU LEFT ME HERE WITH NOTHING!”

The sound of the rain was his only response.

Letting out a broken sob, he pushed himself to his feet. “I am finished!” he snarled bitterly, swiping a hand through the watery air. “The castle is completed! I owe you nothing! There is no longer any reason… for… my… existence…”

Struggling to contain the wracking sobs that shuddered through his body, he spun away, aware that he was crying again, but he didn’t care. He could not feel the tears through the rain streaming over his face.

He stepped over to the edge of the knoll, beside the waterfall.

Once, on a sunny day, he and Requar had fought on this clifftop, and his brother had pushed him – accidentally or otherwise – from this very spot. He couldn’t remember how it had happened, only that he had woken up in bed in his castle with servants attending to him, having lost his memory and his magic. An extremely rare chance event had occurred – known as a Phoenix Effect, in which he had suffered a loss of magic instead of his life force.

He stared down into the darkness. Rain fell on either side of him, unseen in the gloom. The waterfall was deafening in his ears, he could feel it thundering through the rock beneath his feet.

I should have died that day, he thought bleakly. Everything that had happened after that moment had simply been one horror after another. All of the struggles, all of the anguish… what had been the point of it all?

You won, Requar. You have destroyed me.

It didn’t matter, any more. There was only one thing left to be done:

To finish what his brother had started.

He moved forward.

Araynia struggled her way up through the rocks, treading carefully on the steep, slick, gravelly trail. She was already soaked through; her cloak had become a waterlogged weight dragging at her steps. She was freezing and tired, panting with the effort. But still, some strong inner compulsion led her onwards, would not allow her to turn back no matter how mad her quest seemed.

The blue light from her pendant brightened the way.

Finally, she reached the summit of the path, and paused for a moment to catch her breath.

It leaped from her throat in a startled cry.

It was difficult to tell who was more shocked in that moment: the drenched young noblewoman or the black and white clad sorcerer standing perilously close to the cliff’s edge.

They both leaped backwards at the same time.

Arzath’s arm whipped out like a striking snake, and a blinding purple flash of lightning seared across her vision, smashing into the rocks mere feet away. Instinctively, Araynia threw herself to one side, against a large boulder bordering the path, the bolt missing her by inches. She felt the heat of it as it crackled past.

“HOW DARE YOU COME HERE!” Arzath screamed, his voice high and tremulous, wavering on the edge of sanity. “THIS PLACE IS FORBIDDEN!”

Araynia cowered in terror.

“LEAVE!” he shrieked. “NOW!”

She wished that she could do just that, wished that she was back in her warm, safe bed instead of out here on a windswept mountain, assaulted by the elements and a crazed sorcerer. But her will and her courage were being guided somehow, and she had not come all this way to turn back now.

Slowly, shakily, she rose to her feet. Wind blew droplets of icy rain into her face as she stepped out of her cover and walked bravely across the grass in front of the enraged sorcerer.

Time seemed to slow, the rain became long glistening streaks disappearing into the night around her, her footsteps gracefully treading the sodden grass, each heartbeat and breath taking an age. She was sure that behind her, Arzath was lifting his arm again, deadly purple magic ablaze in his hand, aiming it right at her back.

But she kept going, fear swimming somewhere in the background, unable to seize her…

The light of her pendant revealed a silver gleam in the darkness, off to her right. She turned to it as though in a trance, moved towards it, sank to her knees in front of it.

A sword was impaled blade downwards in the rocky soil, solemn and exquisite. Lifting her pendant from around her neck, she placed it carefully over the hilt, so that the blue stone sat gently amongst the others of its kind embedded there.

The sapphires in the hilt ignited, all at once, with cerulean fire. A cool glow bloomed over the knoll.

She stared at the sword, mesmerised by its heartbreaking beauty. She reached out a hand and touched it…

Arzath slammed into her from the side, grabbing her, attempting to pull her away. “NO!” he cried. “Do not touch it!”

But it was too late: her fingers had already closed around the handle. She let out a cry of pain as Arzath wrenched at her. “Stop! My arm!”

“LET… GO!”

She couldn’t. Her hand seemed to have seized up, fastened tightly around the handle. It was stuck there.

“I CAN’T!” she screamed.

She clutched the hilt with her other hand, trying to ease the pressure on the arm that Arzath was trying to tear in half. The Sword quivered beneath her grip, as though coming to life, a tremor passing up through the long silver blade, through the hilt and into her arms. A bright flash of pain came with it, making her gasp.

She began to sob, fear closing in around her now. Her vision became strange and blurry, everything tinged with rainbow colours. Arzath was desperately trying to prise her fingers away from the hilt…

And then, without warning, the blue light of the sapphires exploded into a dazzling white flare that engulfed them both.