Sleep had not come easy, nor had it been kind to Cailen. In the boundless expanse between the waking world and the ethereal sea of his dreams, Cailen felt as though he were hunted. He ran through a thickly grown tangle of brush and dead trees. He couldn't tell what pursued him, but it was close. The two crashed through the brush with reckless abandon. Cailen took dozens of tiny scrapes and cuts for his effort but it seemed as though the creature was gaining on him. The creature chased him relentlessly, never tiring. The thing had an evil aura, one that struck fear to the core Cailen's very being. Every action he took was for naught as he realized that he could no longer run, but had to turn and fight.
Cailen spun back on his pursuer, ready to face whatever had been chasing him. As Cailen spun the world morphed around him. The thick brush he had just struggled through was a large clearing now. Fighting his confusion and disorientation, Cailen barely noticed when a very ragged and pale man stepped from shadows as if they had hidden him fully. Wet, phlegm filled hacking alerted him to the man's presence. So bewildered by the man's sudden appearance it had taken a second for Cailen to notice that this man was naked, and covered in dirt. He had never seen nor heard of such lunacy before!
"I say, good man, do you need help?" Cailen asked, unsure of what madness held this man.
In response the man only growled, teeth chopping and clacking off each other as if he were trying to form once familiar, but now forgotten words. The man quickly looked over each shoulder in a manner that suggested that hearing Cailen's voice had confused him. As the man's head turned, it brought to Cailen's awareness that he was in immediate danger. Protruding from the rear of the man's head was the handle of an ax!
Fighting the urge to wretch, Cailen slowly drew his sword and settled into a defensive stance. The familiar stance calmed his nerves and brought a flood of comforting memories. Sunny days spent with his friends, his only family, suffering hours of swordplay together. Almost as quickly as the happy memories came forth, so too did the mockery of a man that stood before him.
With a low, rattling growl the creature stalked closer. Then, in a furious explosion of movement, the creature leaped at Cailen. Clawed hands flailed at him, digging at his defenses in an attempt to get to his throat. He got his sword up in time to get it between him and the strange man attacking him. Shunting the momentum of the rush, Cailen hooked the crossguard under the man's arm driving it up and away. He stepped under the flailing arm and drove his shoulder into the man's back. Cailen yanked backward and up, the blade biting deep into his attacker's armpit. Sure that he had won the fight he turned to leave.
More rabid growling made Cailen turn back. The man's arm now flopped uselessly to the side. His attacker charged him again. Taking pity on the fool, Cailen struck with a vicious backhanded blow, pommel colliding with the man's jaw. The shattered jaw hung slack. Cailen wasn't sure he had hit him that hard, but his thoughts were stolen away as the man pressed the attack with his remaining arm.
Cailen slapped the arm to the man's inside as he stepped through to his right. Planting his foot behind his attacker's, he brought a stiff left forearm across the slavering idiot's chest. The blow buckled the man's legs. The man lost control of his balance. Gravity deposited him on the ground on the back of his neck. Another surprising series of uncomfortable pops and cracks sounded and the attacker's legs went slack. Dark, viscous fluid seeped from the wounds. Cailen stepped on the man's last remaining functional limb as he studied closer.
He wondered if this thing were a ghoul or a wight. He wasn't very well-read on the undead, they were supposed to be a footnote in history. They were supposed to have all been laid to their final rest with the fall of the Second Era. There wasn't anything else to do for the man though, the legends prescribed salt and sacred oils be burnt over the body, Cailen had precisely none. Seeing no other option, he drove his blade through the man's eye. With that final attack, he went limp, now completely dead.
Concerned, Cailen turned to continue on his way. He had somewhere to be but his mind fogged, he couldn't remember where it was. Suddenly a strange sensation came over him, he felt light and his mind seemed to dim as if falling asleep. His body collapsed forwards in mid-step. His right foot remained planted as the knee of that leg folded under his weight. His chest slammed violently off of the jammed limb causing him to spin onto his back. As he turned, his momentum arrested itself just before hitting the ground. He felt himself suddenly rushing upwards, higher and higher, until he found himself staring at the canvas walls of his shelter.
The creeping grey light of dawn seeped into his shelter enough that he could make out Honey, idly chewing on grasses and the pseudo-dragon had nestled in the space between his legs. His nightmare still affected him, he remembered every second of his encounter and the lasting pain of crumpling in a heap made his mind race.
Despite himself, and his victory over the creature in his nightmare, Cailen felt true fear for the first time in years. No trial could have prepared him for that, his dream had felt so real. Not even for a second had he considered that it wasn't, either. Shaking from the cold and terror Cailen heard whispers at the edges of his consciousness. Insidious comments questioned if he were really as skilled and courageous as his masters had told him. Glancing at his bastard sword propped against the stone made him feel like an imposter, despite having trained non-stop in its use for a decade.
Even remembering what was at stake did little to stay Cailen's indulgent descent into self-pity. He began packing in his camp and contemplated catching up to his fellows or maybe even abandoning the cause altogether. Honey whinnied as she began nervously pawing the earth. It seemed as if the air inside the shelter had grown a measure colder as if the fire no longer contributed its heat. As he dressed and donned his worn and battered armor, Cailen focused on maintaining a strict rhythm to his breathing. Muscles he had no idea were tensed began to relax. He felt a sensation on the back of his neck, it felt as if somehow someone had poured ice water up his spine instead of down it. He felt as if he were prey being stalked by a deadly predator. It was similar to a feeling he'd felt once before when Bella had been tasked with observing his attempt at one of the trials. In that instant, he knew, he was being spied on.
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Cailen rushed about now. He needed to get to the safety of Highcliff's walls. Something was hunting him, targeting him. While he wasn't as trained in magic, he still knew some of the signs of being targeted by a spell. Stopping for a moment to consider the whys and hows only left his head hurting. Now wasn't the time to sit around thinking, he had to keep running.
The wyrm landed on his shoulder squawking in alarm. Cailen couldn't be sure if the creature had noticed the spell or approaching adversaries. Peeking outside the tent proved disheartening. A blizzard had struck in the night, somehow without waking him nor disturbing Honey. Cailen knew this didn't bode well for him.
Something else bothered Cailen about all of this, the dreams, the immense snowfall. All of this was beyond anything Cailen had ever experienced before, but he knew it was of grave importance. He did spare a thought as to what could be so important about the scroll he carried that he was being harassed so. Surely it wasn't orders for war, the Keepers were capable of making that decision themselves.
As Cailen belted his sword to his hip in a hurry he wondered if he should save time and abandon the canvas sheets to the stone. He had another sheet, and he was sure he could make it to the village of Highcliff before night set in. Despite the previous night's heavy snowfall, Cailen felt he would make good time yet. A few other items hadn't made the cut to be repacked, and the whole thing seemed wasteful to Cailen at first. Practicality and pragmatism had won out in the end though. No sheet of canvas was worth what was written on the scroll. Again the oppressive feeling of being watched prickled him his spine, then the gooseflesh on his arm confirmed it. Finally, Cailen prepared Honey to leave the stone.
Cailen guided the horseback to the road on foot and slid into the saddle. He tried with great difficulty to ignore the cold of the snow and settle into the saddle. Urging Honey forward the horse made fair speed away despite the snow occasionally brushing her knees. A shrill whistle of the wyrm drew his attention away from thoughts of cold and snow. For some reason, he thought of the days to come, another summer season of laying to rest bandits and brigands. He briefly wondered if the wyrm might have cast a charm on him. Either way, Cailen smiled as dawn sparkled off the virgin snow. Cailen had even begun to write off his nightmare as mere stress and even dismissed his fears of being watched as paranoia born from the nature of the situation.
Hours passed and the sun approached its zenith. He had entered Gloamridge some time ago. So far the journey had been considerably less exciting. While he had not so much noticed the passage of time, his stomach reminded him that he skipped breakfast. He promised himself some time to sit and eat a warm meal upon finding an appropriate clearing. The wyrm bounded about overhead, leaping from limb to limb of the old trees. Bird calls were few and far between, spring had only just begun, but the forest was filled with the occasional oh-ka-reeee of the red-winged blackbirds. They reminded him of many a season spent
Cailen loved the woods, he felt at home in them. Some of the other initiates would joke about him being an elf with docked ears. He began to relax, and enjoy his ride. In lieu of an honor guard, he supposed that the messenger wyrm shadowing his every step was good enough. He knew that he shouldn't but with little else to do, he mulled over names for the thing.
"Dessix? No...maybe you're a Fawn, a Percy? Oh, I know, Gabber! Hmm. If only you could talk, my winged friend. Then you could tell me your name," Cailen mused aloud after the pseudo-dragon had perched on his shoulder. He tried the names aloud, but the wyrm maintained its air of disinterest.
"A fun little companion you are," he muttered as the thing pressed itself against his neck for warmth.
Riding into a fair-sized clearing Cailen noticed something most peculiar. The snow, it just stopped. It wasn't as if it had been snowing and stopped, but that there was a hard limit at which the snow simply had not fallen at all. One step crunched into a half-frozen snowdrift, the next made little noise as the ground was suddenly dry. A line of undisturbed snow stretched in both directions just inside the clearing. Cailen thought himself mad, but a second glance indicated that there was even a defined point, as if two different lines of snow terminated in the same place.
"How?" Cailen managed after a moment of awed rapture at the unbelievable phenomena. The old draft horse started chopping at the ground, its nerves clearly on edge. He saw something shimmer near the point in the snow line. It looked to be metal but he couldn't be sure unless he went over to it.
"Hold girl, hold," his voice trailing off into the whispers of one of the few cantrips he knew. It would return the nerve to and calm a frightened animal. Cailen would be grateful if it only did enough to keep her from rearing as he dismounted. The little dragon firmly latched to his shoulder, craned its long neck in every direction.
At that moment, something had shifted in the wind. Cailen could now smell what was setting his horse on edge, the sickly sweet stench of death. It wafted on the gentle breeze from the south. He pressed further into the clearing, following the line of snow. As he got closer he could see what had captured his attention. Laying at the center of a circle of stones, each etched with runes of death and decay, was a bronzed human skull. The skull itself was small as if it had belonged to a child. Set into its eyes were gems so black they seemed to draw the light in hungrily. He noticed that a rose had been etched into the skull, its lines filled in with a black substance. Cailen knew enough of magic traps to give this a wide berth, but he'd never heard of such items being used in rituals. This seemed entirely macabre and barbaric to him.
"Aspect, guide me," He breathed, left without words. He had been raised on tales of war and of heros performing great deeds. Nothing, however, nothing at all could have prepared him for the reality he now faced.