Chapter Eighteen
A Place of Dreams
Where the guest room was like a blank canvas, this chamber was a work of art. The colours of autumn were cast about the room, from the bronze, red and orange walls to the rich red wood of the bed frames. Mounted on pegs, hooks and nails, weapons and instruments were strung all about. Even the bedspreads were varying colours of cosy bronze and gentle reds. All in all, there were eight single-sized bunk beds, arranged like the rows of a military barracks.
Flinn approached the third bed along on the right side and patted the frame. “This is you.”
Michael lightly rubbed the covers between his fingers. He couldn’t believe how soft they were any more than he could believe they were his.
The broad-shouldered Paladin then moved smoothly to the wall on the left of Michael’s bed and muttered a short phrase beneath his breath. He placed his hand on a particular panel of the wall and suddenly a rectangle about the size of a piece of parchment came alive with a gentle, blue energy. When he removed his hand it left the five-fingered outline in place.
“Place your hand here.”
Michael did as he asked, not sober enough to ask questions, and felt the gentle hum in the base of his wrist.
The blue light then flashed yellow and vanished. A beat passed and the entire four-foot panel slid sideways, revealing a medium-sized cupboard. Inside was a range of new clothing, and though all fairly simple and unexciting, there had to be half a dozen pairs of trousers and a dozen shirts of various colours and shades. Beneath them was a good deal of empty space, a travel pack, and a small shelf for books.
Michael stared for an inordinate amount of time. He looked slowly at Flinn and just pointed at himself. “Mine?”
Flinn nodded and put his arm around his shoulder. “All yours.”
Michael had never owned so many shirts in his entire life. Less than sober tears came hot to his face and he shook his head in ever-lasting disbelief and looked around the room. He glanced up at Flinn’s face and looked at his bright blue and green eyes, glittering happily at him.
“Really didn’t think my life would start today.”
Flinn leaned comfortably against the bedpost and smiled heartily. “Welcome home, Paladin.”
Michael wasn’t sure when he climbed into bed, he wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, he wasn’t even sure when he’d started dreaming. It was a dream rather like waking up, as if he’d closed his eyes on one world and been pushed through the veil of another.
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*****
He was standing in a cavern. The cold clung to his back like a damp, unwanted hand. Above, the ceiling was so high that it disappeared in darkness. Michael wondered if perhaps it was simply open to a black and starless sky. By the young man’s side, Oliver and Sarah both stood, each facing outwardly with weapons clutched tightly in hand. They were decorated in grime, sweat and a tapestry of injuries from scrapes to mildly alarming bleeds. Michael was thrust so deeply into shock that he almost didn’t see the earnest terror in their eyes.
Michael glanced down to find his bow in hand with an arrow already nocked. He knew somehow it was his last.
The silence of the room was so thick that Michael’s breaths were short and stifled to keep from making sound. A wall of darkness stretched around them, so dense that the three Legacies couldn’t see further than the ends of their weapons.
In the dark resounded a sharp set of sounds, singing out clack, clack, clack, with the rhythm of a calm walk.
Michael raised his bow, blinking slowly in the low light. The sound was no hard-heeled shoe, nor firmly set foot. This he knew. But the fear in the deep trenches of Michael’s mind knew a set of footsteps when he heard them, be they made from flesh or stone.
His bowstring creaked as he drew it so and a chuckle flowed easily from the curtain of shadow, though its speaker went unseen. It had no warmth. No joy.
Sarah and Oliver wordlessly moved in front of Michael.
Sarah cleared her throat and commanded, “Show yourself.” Despite the shake in her hands, her voice travelled like the roar of white water across an open field.
Some smiles can be said to be heard stretching onto a face. But in the dark of the chamber, this grin crackled like forked lightning and the energy shuddered through the bodies of the Legacies.
“Myself?” the voice asked, and the sound of it ran cold down the length of Michael’s spine and through the soles of his feet.
The hidden speaker then mumbled a word in a dark and twisted tongue.
And like they were summoned by shadow, an overwhelming horde of creatures stepped from every which way toward the trio, entering the space like a flash flood. The three of them brought their weapons high in panic but it was for nought as the creatures all stopped a foot away.
Michael trembled down to his bones as he was eye to eye with an unfathomable nightmare. Before him was an endless sea of wolves, tall as snow bears and hewn from shifting stone, like great monstrous statues cursed with life. Their long snouts were loaded with fractured teeth and set in their skulls were burning red eyes.
A hard tear rolled down Oliver’s face, but his sword-hand only tightened. Oliver took a measured breath and raised his blade toward his own third of the nightmare.
Sarah’s back leg trembled. But after a long moment she set her teeth and closed her eyes. When they opened again, the fear in her was stripped of its name, and its place stood fury.
Michael grew as pale as moonlight. His fear took hold and he wished only to stay as silent as possible. His voice- his only true power -was gone.
The speaker in the dark sighed. Then, full of cold and sneering, they said, “I suppose you’re right. Where are my manners?”
Out of the curtain of pure dark, a shape that was almost Draendican passed into the moonlight. Their body, unlike the wolves, was cut from a vast variety of stones, both pale and dark, almost akin to quarts-stone and that of black slate, moving together like muscles coated in molten rock. Six arms sprouted in three pairs on either side of the speaker’s body, each folded politely as they strode. Upon their shadow-gleamed face, two eyes of the purest obsidian sat staring curiously over them, like they were children they’d found wandering in the woods. And peaking from the corners of their smirking mouth were smooth, glass-like fragments of dark teeth that glinted in the pale starlight.
“It would be customary to ask your name before extending mine. So, do tell, who are you?” they asked, with a voice so cold it was like being thrown head-first into a hailstorm.
Michael woke with a start, but the buzz of alcohol and delirium of sleep stayed thick upon him, and he fell back beneath consciousness as though swept beneath a tall ocean swell.