Lucas drifted in and out of consciousness a few times, which was an odd experience when he knew it was happening. Every time he woke he caught snippets of muffled conversation around him and the impression of something hard like metal swaying beneath him. He tried to stay awake, but he was too exhausted to make any noise or even move, his limbs leaden and his thoughts foggy. The rocking movement of whatever he was lying on combined with the soft blankets he was swaddled in quickly lulled him back to sleep without fail.
At first, it felt like he was blinking between places, tuning back in to marginally different sounds around him. But soon enough, dreams started filling the gaps.
Lucas had never been a lucid dreamer, and frankly wasn’t even sure he believed in the concept. So the dreams kind of unnerved him rather than comforting him as they might have if he’d experienced them with blissful ignorance, which was frustrating. He really would have liked to believe they were real and he truly was living out some of his past experiences with his friends, if only for a short time.
They went by quickly, flashing past his eyelids, interspersed with moments where he was subjected to the aches and pains in the cold of the waking world.
He relived the first time he met Rian in the second year of primary school. The stocky bald boy had been playing with a Thunderbirds toy that matched Lucas' own, and of course that meant they became best friends on sight. It was one of his earliest clear memories.
He woke to muffled voices, vaguely familiar. One rumbled beneath him, and a reply came from a little to his right. He tried to move his head, tried to listen, but unconsciousness took him again.
Next, he dreamt of encountering Aarya and Claire in a PE session where boys had to pair up with girls, presumably so they’d all realise ‘girl germs’ and ‘boy germs’ weren’t a deadly epidemic. The four of them hatched a dastardly scheme to hang out with their best friends by pairing up and sticking close by, and ended up finding themselves getting along as a group rather than a pair of pairs. A quartet was formed.
His next awakening was accompanied by a much higher awareness of how sore his body was, which of course meant sleep took longer to claim him. He was awake long enough to make out some of the words around him and form a vague idea of the ongoing conversation about curses and lost cities and directions. Lucas strongly disliked the idea of returning to the overgrown hellhole, but didn’t want to leave these people to it without him, either. He fell asleep feeling conflicted.
As expected, the next dream introduced Jamie to their group. The redheaded boy transferred into their class halfway through their third year of primary school and was directed by the quartet’s Form Group teacher to the table their quartet had claimed. Initial scepticism of the intruder fell away that same day the moment he defended Aarya from some little shit who called her a slur, his angry fists winning him the eternal loyalty of the group. And then they were five, and so they remained for over a decade.
The ensuing dreams told the story of their friendship, with brief interludes for Lucas to wake up and try to figure out what was going on around him through the treacle pudding his brain had apparently transformed into.
They went on many an adventure in primary school, riding their bikes as a group and missioning through the countryside and exploring abandoned buildings, and they only got more audacious as they grew up. Mischief and mayhem and detentions galore. They loved a prank and abhorred a day without a new experience. With Aarya’s boundless cheer, Claire’s mind, Jamie’s athleticism, Rian’s strength, and Lucas’ adaptability, they had it all. There was so much life in their little group, Lucas was always sure they drew envy from other kids.
The memories buoyed his heart and filled him with the warmth of nostalgia.
The waking world yielded little information. The most clear image he managed to comprehend was him lying on the grass on a soft bedroll, with the Skycloak leaning beside him with her eyes closed in concentration, her hands clasped to her chest where moonlight was slipping between her fingers, beaming down on Lucas’ form, cold seeping into his skin where it touched.
After that came the final dream.
The cafe and bar nestling in the corner of the Harris Arcade had been their annual meetup spot since Aarya’s eighth birthday party, and they knew the place too well. For the most part it stayed familiar with its arcade machines, karaoke stage, and long bar counter as stalwart presences, but over time they’d started making a game of spotting what had changed since their previous visit. Thus, Lucas could see that the neon sign above the bar was the wrong colour, the shabby totally-not-Pokemon plushie claw game was somehow back, a smoking section had reappeared, and a dozen other little inaccuracies mixed together from across the years. Hell, this wasn’t even the place they’d been planning to meet for lunch on that day.
Even then, he almost dismissed it all, wanting so badly to believe that his friends were in front of him. They’d arranged themselves in the usual formation at the round table at the back of the room, furthest from the arcade machines: Lucas with his back to the wall, Rian to his left, then Claire, then Aarya, then Jamie completing the circle on Lucas’ right. There were smiles on their faces. There was laughter in their eyes.
And they were all wearing mediaeval outfits.
Claire was in a voluminous black robe, her usually-wild black hair scraped back into a strict bun that didn’t suit her at all. There were dark circles beneath her green eyes, and her face was pale.
Rian wore a brown tunic with a leather belt cinching it at the waist. The man who insisted he would shave his hair until the day he died had it flowing down to his shoulders in deep brown waves, with multiple braids filled with beads mixed into the ordered mess. There was a haunted look in his blue eyes.
Jamie’s hair, on the other hand, was cropped short, as if the two of them had swapped styles. He wore a sleeveless white shirt, and he was bulky in a way he’d never been. Jamie had always been a runner, and his lithe build had matched. Seeing him like this was surreal.
Aarya was the most different of the four. She wore a dress of midnight blue, with silver embroidery cascading across her shoulders and down her torso in looping patterns. They formed images of silver animals frolicking through a night time forest, lit by a pentagonal moon symbol stitched over her heart. Her dark hair was styled in an elaborate braid tied around her head to give the impression of a tiara. Her make-up was immaculate, eyes kohlled and lips ruby red. She looked like a queen.
Lucas was transfixed for a long moment, beholding the changes in his friends. They were chatting among each other amiably, though no sound passed their lips that Lucas could hear. He didn’t care. He was just happy to see them, no matter the circumstances. He drank it in like a man who’d spent the better part of a month in an arid desert, and the sight of them was his water.
When he tried to speak to them, no words came out of his own lips, either. That wasn’t initially distressing on its own, but it quickly became obvious that, while they could hear each other, they could not hear him. In fact, they didn’t even look at him. As if they couldn’t see him at all, even though he was right here.
As they chatted away, their attention was constantly straying to the entrance, and this became more frequent as time passed. Soon, their conversation was growing more strained, their smiles dropping. They checked their watches, glanced at the clocks, fiddled with their phones.
Lucas waved his arms, bellowing to get their attention. He slammed his hands on the table. Threw anything he could get his hands on. Nothing worked. He tried to rise from his chair, but found himself rooted in place like he was stuck with superglue.
Before long, they weren’t looking at each other at all, and conversation had died, their smiles gone. Then, one by one, they gave up waiting, turning their attention to the table, until Aarya was the only one checking her watch, periodically glancing at the door. Their conversation restarted, but there were no smiles now. A grim countenance fell over the group. Their talk quickly turned heated, rude gestures flying all over the place, looks of anger on their faces.
Aarya was still gazing at the doorway when she turned pale as a ghost and fell limp in her chair, her eyes unseeing. She slowly slid down until she was almost falling from the chair, and only stayed up because Rian scrambled over to hold onto her shoulders, screaming at her with tears in his eyes. The other two were staring at her in horror.
After a long moment, Rian’s head drooped, tears on his face, and he let Aarya’s body fall from her chair, where it vanished beneath the table. The usually-cheerful man kept his head bowed as he rose from the table with a haunted air to him. Claire and Jamie called out to him as he walked away, but he left the arcade without looking back. The darkness beyond the doors swallowed him.
Claire and Jamie could barely look at each other after that. They sat in the same places, not speaking a word, as time seemed to go on fast-forward, the restaurant decaying and crumbling to dust until only the table was left. Finally, Jamie slumped and rested his head in his hands, covering his eyes. Claire reached out as if to put a hand on his shoulder, but hesitated an inch from touching him. She drew her hand back and sighed. With one last glance at her watch, she rose from the table and left with a dark look in her eyes. Only Jamie remained, but before Lucas’ horrified eyes he seemed to petrify, stone creeping up his arms and legs and along his torso, until only his head was flesh and blood.
Then it all vanished, and Lucas was back in the world of the waking. Sensation came rushing in, clearer than any other time he’d awoken. The rustle of the wind through the grass, the soft bedding beneath his back, the heady scent of something hearty cooking on a crackling fire, and he opened his eyes to the sight of a woman with platinum blond hair taking up most of his vision, scrutinising him with analytical blue eyes. The fog of sleep vanished as if it had been snatched away, like he’d been snug under warm blankets and someone had ripped them off, exposing him to the cold.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Good morning, Ser Rian,” the Skycloak said. “I’m happy enough with your progress to let you wake, but you shouldn’t stress yourself. The strain you put on your mana pathways wasn’t life-threatening and wouldn’t have done long term damage on its own, but caution is prudent when it comes to matters of the soul.”
He was hurting, but not as badly as he had been. His aches were soothed, weeks-old bruises rather than days-old ones. The throbbing in his ankle and knee had mostly abated. Even the irritating stings from little cuts and scrapes that had gone untreated were largely gone, just a few egregious ones nagging at his attention as he shuffled around in the bedroll.
His throat felt dry as sandpaper. Again. But all it took was a single cough for the Skycloak to hold out a waterskin for him, and a few gulps solved the problem swiftly enough. The cool liquid seemed thicker than normal water, soothing his body as it passed through him. “What was that stuff?” he asked. His voice rasped at first, but got better with every syllable.
Honestly, his mana system was the most attention-grabbing pain right now, and even that wasn’t as bad as he thought it probably should be. His mana was flowing placidly, and after a quick inspection he felt no damage. It just felt… sore. All over. It wasn’t even painful, necessarily, just deeply uncomfortable, and even then the drink the Skycloak had given him was working wonders. Jamie was fast asleep in his chest, but he got the impression the cat had been up and about a few times. Hopefully the Skycloak hadn’t noticed.
The Skycloak glanced at him as she withdrew the water skin beneath her cloak. “Holy water. You’ve never had any?”
Lucas held back a grimace. Great, he thought, assuming it would be suspicious to ask what holy water was. “Never had any need for it,” he said neutrally instead.
“Fortune smiles on you, then,” she said. “Recovering only forty hours after exhausting one’s mana is an uncommon feat. Doubly so given your underdeveloped system.”
Lucas blinked. “A day and a half? Felt like a lifetime.”
“That’s still a long time to sleep, Ser Rian,” Wick rumbled from nearby. Lucas turned his head to find the other three arrayed around a small fire pit, watching a pot as something meaty-smelling bubbled within it. Wick was out of his armour for once, instead wearing a simple brown tunic and half-length trousers tucked into thick socks that came halfway up his shins. “But exhausting one’s mana does strange things to people. Who knows, perhaps you did live out another life in your dreams?”
Lucas eased himself up onto his elbows and craned his neck, looking around. They were on top of another hill, but with far different surroundings from the one on which the battle had occurred. The grass was different, thick and clumpy and boggy rather than the rolling carpet of blue-green he’d been traversing for days before. There was a wall of tall trees standing sentinel at the foot of the hill, sunlight poking golden fingers through the canopy and lighting up the mossy ground dusted with sprinkles of frost. In the distance a crystalline river snaked through the land. The sky was cloudless and radiant blue.
A sigh escaped him, and he let himself slump back onto the still uncomfortably comfortable bedroll. He recognised this place, though he’d only seen this forest from a distance. Doubling back on himself was depressing beyond belief, but there was nothing for it. His whole purpose for leaving the city had been to find people and, thus, answers. He had the first part before him, now it was just a matter of getting more of the latter without giving himself away. A tricky task, but no other option was available at present.
And besides, he wasn’t going to leave them to die to the malicious plants that infested the city. Especially not after they’d helped him without obligation to do so.
“Did you carry me?” he asked, remembering the soft fabrics tied around his torso and the hard metal that had rocked beneath him.
“It was no burden,” Wick said. “And no man gets left behind, in these times. We humans are too few to abandon even one living soul.”
“Still. Thank you,” Lucas said. It wouldn’t have been nice to wake up on that same hilltop, with the rotting corpses of beasts all around him. He turned to the Skycloak. “And thank you for your healing.”
The Skycloak nodded, rising to her feet and moving over to the bubbling pot.
“Feel free to help yourself to the stew,” Jyn said, nodding towards a wooden bowl and spoon that rested next to the pot.
Jamie stirred in his chest, and Lucas absently patted at his heart. The monstercat let out a purr that resonated through his soul, radiating contentment and pleasure. With it came a vague impression of a desire, with a questioning lilt to it.
Hunger, naturally.
Lucas’ mouth started watering as the scent of cooking meat wafted past him. His stomach growled. Jamie wasn’t the only hungry one, it seemed.
The pot turned out to contain a vegetable stew made with beef stock, and Lucas could have ascended to nirvana with the first bite. Berries and fruits grown with the urging of his mana had been much of his sustenance for the last month, and even a bad stew would have been heavenly. This was good. Jyn had tended the fire and kept the pot’s heat consistent with his pyromancy, and Rena had combined an eyesight enhancement technique with experience to gauge what ingredients were needed and when. The two made a good team off the battlefield as well as on it, it seemed, creating a stew that was hearty and warming and rich.
They ate quietly, savouring their meal in a circle around the fire. Lucas found himself full before he was halfway through his first bowl, unused to such a strong meal. Rena and Jyn had seconds, and Wick went for thirds. The surprise came from the Skycloak, who finished off five bowls in the time it took Lucas to dither his way through half of one, then pointedly eyed his leftovers when he set them aside. Getting the hint, he passed them over to her and could only watch in appalled fascination as she tipped the bowl back in one gulp. She nodded at him with solemn appreciation.
“Ah, a good meal,” Wick said with a sigh, resting a hand on his stomach and letting out a loud belch. “My compliments to the cooks.”
“Mine as well,” the Skycloak said.
Jyn and Rena had been silent as they focused on cooking breakfast, and the Bowmaiden seemed keen to make up for it as Jyn set to cleaning out the empty pot.
“So, Ser Rian,” she drawled. “You’re rather adept with that stick.”
“I do okay,” Lucas said, eyeing her.
“Lasting as long as you did was impressive,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Of course, you would have been in deep trouble on your own.”
“Anyone would’ve been in trouble,” Wick said.
“Oh, I know,” Rena said. “Quests are undertaken in parties for a reason and all that. Just trying to praise our new Star without giving him a big head. It was impressive, but not that impressive.”
“I’m your Star now?” Lucas asked.
“Unless you think you can outshoot me with a bow?” Rena offered with one eyebrow arched in challenge. “You can’t, by the way. I was trained by the Duskpoole Rangers, and there are no better marksmen in the world.”
Lucas shook his head.
“Or if you think you can outmatch any of the others in their fields? They’re pretty good themselves.”
Lucas shook his head again. He’d seen them all in action, and didn’t think he measured up to any of them right now.
Right now, he thought. With the Gift, the Great Star, the Prophecy of Five and a bunch of other shit he didn’t want to think about right now, the current power disparity likely wouldn’t remain that way for long. The thought was simultaneously exhilarating and mildly frightening. He'd never been much of a fighter. That was Rian's thing.
“Then it stands to reason that you should be our Star, if you’re joining us on our quest,” she said with a smile. “Don’t go thinking that makes you a leader, though. Just fill in the gaps like you did before.”
“I… I’ll do that, I guess?” Lucas said. He looked around, finding the others weren’t paying much attention to the conversation. “Will that require training? Practice with teamwork?”
“We have no time for that,” the Skycloak said, proving his assumption about her attention wrong. In fairness to him, she did seem engrossed with something in the distance. “Do what you can, and we’ll work around you as necessary.”
“You showed good instincts before,” Wick said.
“Right up until you lost your mind to battle frenzy,” Jyn said.
“You’ll do fine,” Wick said, shooting the wizard a lighthearted glare.
They lapsed into silence again for a little while, the crisp morning rolling by. The others busied themselves with their own tasks; Wick moved away to inspect his armour which he summoned in the same manner as his shield, Jyn pulled a burned book from his robes and read from its black pages—it seemed to be faintly smoking, and the wisps of smoke were travelling up and under his spacious hood; Lucas wondered how he was reading it—and the Skycloak held up her white pendant necklace and watched it sway from side to side as if she was hypnotising herself. Rena started sorting through her arrows, picking them out seemingly at random, frowning and muttering under her breath.
With no food or conversation to distract him, Lucas was left alone with only his thoughts for company. After the dreams he’d been through, his friends were at the forefront of his mind. He’d have liked it if his childhood memories had occupied that space, but he kept replaying that image of Aarya’s pale, slack face as she slid from the chair, disappearing beneath the table. With it came the memory of what the Skycloak had said before.
“Lady Aarya, the Great Bow, was slain at the battle of Caelan.”
She’d said Aarya was dead. Casually, like it was old news.
It couldn’t be true. That was just… There was no way. He didn't want to believe it. Refused to.
Lucas desperately wanted to know the truth, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Seeking answers here felt too perilous, too many traps he could blindly walk into and expose himself. This stuff seemed like common knowledge.
They’ve talked about Claire a bunch. She’s apparently around somewhere. I’ll track her down and ask her, he told himself. There wouldn’t need to be any need to hide himself with her. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was a goal, an end.
A small voice in the back of his head reprimanded him, telling him he was just avoiding the issue like he always did until it was too late. He ignored it.