Young Esar clutches his dream journal, a vision of the creature from his dream in the background [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/571846492780757003/1132316459574497280/esar_dream.png]
Esar, age 11
26 Years Ago
Esar awoke in darkness, heart pounding, and seized his dream journal off the nightstand. The light from the incand pen illuminated the words he scrawled on the page, recording in stark black ink what he’d just witnessed in his dream. There was no time to think, no time to interpret. He had to record everything before he forgot any details. His mother had drilled that into him until he did it by instinct. Only after it was all written down could he begin to think about what it was he’d seen.
Esar slammed his journal shut and hopped out of bed. He dashed out of his room and down the unlit hall.
“Mom!” he cried, pounding on her door. “Mom, Mom!”
No answer. No time to wait and be polite. Esar wrenched the door open and peered into the room. It was empty, the bed neatly made. His mother hadn’t come home from the palace that night.
Esar shivered. The dream had been so clear, and that meant that the thing was close. There wasn’t much time. And his mother wasn’t here to tell him what to do.
His body sprung into action again, driven without his conscious thought. He didn’t bother to wake his grandparents, barely even stopped to slide his bare feet into his shoes before rushing out the door in his nightshirt.
Streetlights illuminated the broad avenue underneath the predawn sky, reflecting off the slick cobblestones. Esar splashed through puddles as he ran past the mansions of Thaliron’s elite citizens, clutching his journal to his chest. He slipped and fell in front of House Yasoh’s gate, but was up and running again a moment later, as if the creature from his nightmare was right behind him.
The creature whose form was burnt into his eyelids was beyond anything he’d seen or even conceived of before. The vision chased him around the corner, as if it shadowed him with those enormous black wings, its serpentine body shimmering with glints of color . . .
But the shadows were cast by the overhanging wall of the palace garden, and the glints of light were reflections on the polished armor of the single guard who leaned against the east gate. The loyalty ribbon that stretched from her shoulder to her wrist matched the banner furled up in a nook behind her, black in the darkness, but a deep marine blue in the light of day.
She seemed to be on the watch for nothing more dangerous than her own boredom, but as Esar drew close, she stood alert, and the look on her face changed to one of concern.
“What’s the matter, young man?” she asked, as Esar came to a halt and tried to catch his breath.
“You have—to let—me in,” he said. “I had a terrible dream.”
“Excuse me?”
“Something terrible is going to happen. I have to talk to my mom, or the king and queen, or—or somebody—right away.”
The guard smirked, leaning back against the wall again. “Look, kid, I’m sorry that you had a bad dream, but this isn’t really the place. Where are your parents?”
“My mother didn’t come home. That’s why I came here.”
“Son, if your mother is missing, the City Watch—”
Only now did Esar realize how he must appear: a skinny, bedraggled little boy in a nightshirt that didn’t even reach his knees, demanding to be allowed to see the king and queen of Elorhe. But there was no helping that now. He stretched himself to his full height and raised his chin. “You don’t understand. I’m the Tresuan,” he announced.
The guard looked at him as if he’d declared himself to be a tree. “You’re not the Tresuan.”
“You’re thinking of my mother. I’m Alzyn Semfrey’s son.” Had they chosen the absolute stupidest woman in Elorhe to guard the door that night? Esar didn’t have time to argue. His mother would never have put up with this sort of treatment.
“Huh,” said the guard. “I’m going to need to check into this.”
“There’s no time! Please—there’s some kind of monster and it’s waking up and it’s going to—”
“A monster?” the guard repeated, suppressing a smile.
He’d made another stupid mistake—talking about a monster, like he was some fear-crazed child who had a nightmare, not a Tresuan whose dreams always came true. The guard looked like she was about to pat him on the head. Esar glared at her.
“Yes, a monster. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t an emergency. Stop wasting time and take me to Zafrys and Svetrand, if you please.”
The guard blinked. Something seemed to have gotten through to her—perhaps he’d managed to summon something like his mother’s gravitas in his sharp, clipped words. “Come along, and we’ll see if we can get things straightened out.”
She pressed her palm to the lockplate and the gate split in two, each half swinging inward smoothly and silently. Esar wanted to run on ahead, but he made himself follow her at a steady, dignified pace. He knew the way to the private chambers of the royal family, he had been there many times with his parents, but she took him to a different entrance and left him in an antechamber while she conferred with a steward.
The room was crowded with upholstered chairs, but Esar’s nerves were wound so tight he couldn’t possibly sit down. Instead, he wove between them in a path too erratic to be called “pacing,” stopping only occasionally to glance at his journal, just to remind himself that he wasn’t a delusional child, he really had seen what he thought he’d seen. The vision was there, recorded in stark black ink, though it was difficult to read his own frenzied handwriting. Every time he heard a sound—or thought he had—his eyes flicked up to the door, but it seemed an eternity before someone appeared in the doorway and spoke in a deep, familiar voice.
“Yes, he is precisely who he says he is. And if he’s here, it probably is important. What brings you here so late, Esar?”
“I had . . . I saw . . .” Esar mumbled his answer to the floor as mortification flooded his face with heat. Of all the people in the world to see him like this, why did it have to be Prince Vaclan? Why couldn’t he have taken the time to get dressed, or at least grabbed a robe or something before he ran out the door?
Vaclan dismissed the guard and beckoned for Esar to follow. Even in the middle of the night, the prince looked perfectly put together in an orange dressing gown embroidered with a pattern of red feathers, his black hair confined in a neat braid. Vaclan was twice Esar’s age, though there was scarcely any difference in their heights anymore.
“What did you see?” Vaclan asked again. The prince didn’t look back at him. Esar was grateful for that.
He spoke slowly and carefully. “A monster. It was like a snake, but it had wings. And big, as long as a linecar cabin. All black but iridescent, with little flecks of light. And . . .” Esar closed his eyes and tried to think of the right way to describe it. “It didn’t seem quite real somehow. Not . . . alive.”
Vaclan paused for a moment, then continued walking. Esar followed him into familiar territory, the wing where the royal family resided, filling the silence with frenzied thought. What was the Prince thinking? Why didn’t he say anything? Esar must have sounded like he was losing his mind. Maybe Vaclan thought he was mad, or telling a wild story for attention . . .
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“I swear I’m not making it up,” Esar blurted out.
“Esar—”
“And I’m not delusional. At least, I don’t think I am, but maybe I wouldn’t know if I was—”
“I know you aren’t delusional, Esar.” Vaclan turned and looked Esar straight in the eyes, holding his gaze. “But this dream . . . do you know? Do you know what it was you witnessed?”
Esar’s mouth went dry and he looked down at his shoes. He had a guess, but it was so ridiculous, so impossible that he didn’t dare speak it aloud and risk looking like a fool.
“A construct.” Someone else answered Vaclan's question, in a voice that made Esar snap to attention.
His mother was here.
Waves of relief, consternation, and shame washed over him in turn as she swept down the hall. She still wore the same tunic she’d worn to dinner the night before, and was as perfectly coiffed as if she’d just risen from the table.
“You saw it, too, didn’t you, Esar? The breaking of the seal. The dralk that manifested and took flight.” She sounded calm, even casual, as she described the strange events they’d both witnessed, but she was scared, too—Esar could see that, could see the effort it took for her just to pretend she was perfectly calm and in control.
“Lady Alzyn.” Vaclan greeted her with the slightest nod.
Alzyn looked up at the prince, as if she hadn’t noticed he was there. “Prince Vaclan,” she said, returning his greeting with no more warmth, and letting her gaze drift towards the door to her right. “I’ve just asked your parents to meet me in the library. I suppose you’ll want to come along as well?”
Vaclan said nothing, but he kept his eyes fixed on Esar’s mother as he turned to open the library door.
“But first, I suppose I must have someone find my son some decent attire,” she added. She rested a hand on Esar’s arm and leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “Why must you always embarrass me?” Then she released him and strode away.
Esar didn’t move from the spot until the king and queen came around the corner. Queen Zafrys was a petite woman with a few strands of gray in her dark brown braid, but she moved with quick, firm steps that outpaced those of her taller husband. King Svetrand looked a great deal like an older version of his son, except he had a vivid red beard in stark contrast with his black hair, the legacy of his Namaian mother. A few attendants followed the monarchs. Esar wished he could sink into the ground and disappear.
“You’ve seen it too, haven’t you, Esar? Whatever it is that has your mother in such a state?” Zafrys said.
Esar nodded silently.
“Have you ever heard of two Tresuans having the same dream?” the king asked her.
“Can’t say I have. But it will be good to have two viewpoints on this. We’re going to need to know everything you can tell us.” Zafrys opened the library door. “Come on, then.”
Vaclan was already seated at a table, shuffling through pages of a large volume that lay open in front of him. A few more books were stacked next to him.
“Tell us what you saw,” Zafrys said. Esar repeated what he’d told Vaclan, then checked his journal to be sure he added every single detail he could recall. The queen and her assistants questioned him to pry out more, and one of them noted down everything he said. Another palace attendant brought Esar a robe, which he accepted gratefully, but his mother still hadn’t returned.
“Architecture sounds like Weslesca, maybe north Sulair,” one of the assistants said. “I’ve got a few speaking lines to the area. Shall I check into it?”
“Go, find out what you can,” Zafrys said. “We’ll need a map of all the sites where the constructs were sealed,” she told another of her assistants, the one who’d been taking notes. “And there must be descriptions, which constructs were sealed where. If we can find which site had that snake creature Esar described, we’ll know where it’s going to emerge. Svetrand, I’m going to go sleep for a bit and see what I can find out there.”
Queen Zafrys wasn’t a Tresuan, of course, but she had been chosen by the Ocean, and that gave her the ability to connect with the dreamspace in some way that Esar didn’t fully understand. After she left, Esar began scanning the shelves for more books that might have the information they were looking for.
“You can get some rest if you need it, Esar,” Vaclan said. “We can take it from here.”
Esar shook his head. “I don’t want to go back to sleep. I want to help.”
Instead of relying on the titles, Esar looked for the oldest books, those that might date back to the time of Kierfes and Isuld, who had traveled the land to seal the constructs four hundred years ago. He found a few that felt right—they reminded him of some of the oldest volumes in the library at home, with titles worn away completely—and carefully carried them to the nearest table.
The diagram was in the third book he opened. Despite his best effort, the hinges cracked when he opened it to a circular illustration that filled both pages.
“I found something,” he announced.
Half a second later, Vaclan was leaning over his shoulder. Esar stepped aside to let him get a better look.
“This—these are all the seals,” he said, leafing through the pages. “And diagrams—how did you find this so quickly, Esar?”
Esar shrugged. “I have to read a lot of old books,” he said. “Guess I kinda got a feel for them.”
“These notes, here—do you think Isuld wrote them herself?” Vaclan asked his father, who had joined them in looking at the book Esar found. Before the king could answer, the door slid open.
At last, Esar’s mother had returned. But she wasn’t alone, and the person who followed her into the library was none other than Danthan Keir.
“What’s he doing here?” Vaclan asked, narrowing his eyes.
“I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” Danthan said. His hair was a mess and the fasteners on his tunic were misaligned, so one end hung lower than the other. Had he just rolled out of bed?
“If you’d been listening—where’s Zafrys?” Alzyn asked, looking around.
“Asleep,” Svetrand replied. “Esar filled us in while you were away. We’ve narrowed down the region to—”
“It’s Gabogred,” Alzyn said, sweeping over to the table that Vaclan had just left. She placed her finger on the map that had been left there, on a point just north of Weslesca’s border with Sulair.
“You’re sure?” the assistant asked, scribbling more notes on her tablet. “There’s five different seals within a fifty-mile radius—”
“I am quite sure,” Alzyn said. “I saw the twin trees of the Gabogred sanctuary. Such landmarks are indispensable for determining the locations of the events I foresee.” She leveled a challenging glance at Prince Vaclan, who crossed his arms but said nothing, then turned to her son. “Thank you, Esar. You may go home now.”
“Do I have to?” Esar looked back hopefully at Vaclan and the king.
“Your son has been of vital assistance while you were off cavorting with the swordplayer,” Vaclan said. He lowered his voice, but surely Danthan would still be able to hear. “If he wants to help, I welcome it.”
“Yeah, you said we need all the help we can get, right?” Danthan put a hand on Alzyn’s shoulder and smiled drowsily at Esar.
The timely return of Queen Zafrys took the attention off of Esar, to his great relief. He took a step back as the others gathered around her, trying to get a better look at what she was carrying. Esar saw only a glint of lamplight reflected off a gemstone as Zafrys set two long, thin items down on an empty table.
“Swords?” asked Svetrand.
“These belonged to Kierfes and Isuld. They’re disruptor swords—the only weapons that will work on constructs.”
“So they’re four hundred years old?” Vaclan said.
“Whatever they’re made of, it doesn’t seem to rust,” Zafrys said. “They’ve brought down constructs before, and they can do it again. It won’t be easy, though.” She drew one of the blades and took a couple of deep breaths.
Vaclan reached for the sword she held. “Mother, you’re not going to be the one bringing them down.”
“I’m the only one who can renew the seal,” Zafrys replied. “I know how, but I need the Ocean’s power to do it. But I won’t be able to until it’s been defeated.”
“Beautiful.” Danthan drew the other sword and stepped away, and finally Esar was able to get a better look. There was a large opal set into the crossbar where the hilt met the blade, but the blade itself was far more interesting. It was black, but shimmered with threads of bright color that seemed to rise up from somewhere within it before subsiding again. It didn’t look like metal, or stone, or anything else, exactly—the material didn’t seem fully real, same as the construct in his dream.
Danthan tested the sword in the air and his smile broadened into a grin, like a child given a shiny new toy. “That’ll do,” he said, turning to Alzyn. “I think I’m getting an idea of what you had in mind. You said Gabogred, right? That’s a long day by linecar.”
“These are relics of the unifiers,” Vaclan said. “I don’t recall anyone inviting you to take them up and fight.”
Danthan returned the sword to its sheath before facing the prince. “Who better than me?” he asked.
“An actual soldier, with experience in real battles.”
“Plodding ground battles against other plodding soldiers,” Danthan replied. “This construct thing can fly.”
“Oh, and can you fly now?”
Danthan grinned. “I can get a hell of a lot closer than anyone else you’ve got.”
“He does have a point,” said the king. “It won’t be a conventional battle.”
“What if we give the other sword to one of our best soldiers?” Zafrys asked. “Who do you think, Vaclan? Edardes Halwer? Suzari Naira?”
“I would say take both, and leave the swordplayer in the arena where he belongs,” Vaclan said. “But if you’re not going to listen to me, then go with Halwer. He’s a bit more solid and reliable—might help to balance out the wild card.”
Esar sat down on the sofa. Perhaps he should have gone home. No one needed him here. No one even seemed to remember that he was there. But he was too tired to walk home now—too tired even to keep up with the argument between his mother and Vaclan. He caught himself nodding off, and tried to keep himself awake by digging his fingernails into his arm. He soon lost the battle, though, and fell asleep.