Lucian opened his eyes slowly, his head throbbing with pain. He recognized the carriage and the familiar face of his father across from him.
“How was the nap?” John asked with a bright smile, but Lucian could see through it. His father was trying to hide something.
There was an elephant in the room.
Lucian frowned, feeling a mix of disappointment and frustration. He had been outclassed by Monica. He had genuinely tried to kill her, and failed even though she was clearly holding back.
He knew it was a losing battle from the start, but he wished he had done better.
He wasn't one to feel regret, having lived all of his lives as he pleased, but losing to Monica felt worse. She had read his attack and disarmed him with skill he hadn't expected. She held back and still effortlessly beat him into the ground.
Lucian felt a hand on his shoulder and noticed his mom was sitting right next to him. He was happy to see her and smiled.
“Tell me what happened,” Lucian asked, his tone softening.
He already had a pretty clear idea of what had happened, but his father relayed it to him just to make sure. Lucian had failed and been knocked out cold by Monica. On top of that, he had failed both the written and magic exams.
He had never tasted defeat so bitter before. It troubled him deeply.
“Where’s El?” He changed the subject.
“Well… there was some good news, Eleanor got in,” his father said cautiously, gauging his response.
“Nice,” he said with a soft smile. Of course, Eleanor would get in, she was his sister. They would be crazy to reject her. “I’m proud of her.”
“We all are,” his mother agreed.
“Is she still there?”
“Yes. She’s actually starting school immediately,” she explained.
Lucian's brows furrowed. It was sudden, too sudden. They had just gone from spending pretty much all of the last few days together to being separated in just a few minutes.
Lucian stared out the window of the carriage; the sights of Tyre were beautiful. The broad, eclectic figure of Lumi was getting smaller every second. “So what now? Am I just not going to see her for a while?” he had to ask.
“Most likely,” his father said. “She was extra emotional at the idea of leaving you behind, so we figured it might be better to take you away before you woke up. She probably would have actually cried if we waited.”
“She does wear her heart on her sleeve,” Lucian agreed sarcastically, “I don’t blame you guys. It would have been hard for me too. I-” he paused and inhaled deeply, “-I definitely would find it hard, yeah.”
It felt strange to not have his twin around. They had always spent a lot of time together, but for the last year, it was especially so. They hung out pretty much all day, and Lucian felt slightly empty without her beside him.
“I don’t know how she’s going to communicate anything without me around,” he said with a laugh that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “She’s hopeless!”
“She’s going to have to learn,” Rey said with her own laugh. “She can’t have her big brother help her with everything.”
Lucian sat somberly, looking down and fidgeting with his fingers.
His parents exchanged a whole silent conversation with a series of looks. At the end of it, John nodded and lightly kicked Lucian’s shin.
“Cheer up! While Eleanor’s in school dealing with history and math, we are going on a journey!”
“Really?” he asked, his brow raising.
“Yup! Me and you, son. I looked all over the city for someone who can make you a new arm, but no luck. So, instead, we’re going with the dwarf route. The Nuno I mentioned before, my friends, live in the woods to the north. Shouldn’t be a hard trip.”
Tyre was primarily a human kingdom, so in order to find some forest dwarves, Nuno, they would have to leave the country. He had no idea what was outside of Tyre other than things he read in books.
“I’m down, but what about Mom?” he asked.
“Just in case something happens we decided one of us will stay in Tyre. Your Dad is keeping an eye on you, so I need to keep an eye on Eleanor. I’m actually going to stay with Monica for a while to work some things out.”
Lucian nodded, understanding his parents' reasoning. He would have loved to travel with both of them, but that would be unfair to his sister. The thought of being separated from his twin for an extended period of time filled him with a sense of unease. They had always been close, spending almost every moment together, and he couldn't imagine what it would be like to not have her by his side.
But he also knew that they both needed to pursue their own paths, and that meant having their own adventures.
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One thing about their family was that they were not the type to waste time. Within a few days they had packed up their supplies and said goodbye to Rey, feeling her lingering gaze as they rode off into the horizon on their horses.
Tyre was a country built on top of a fertile plateau; the heartlands were vast, open plains. The grass stretched as far as the eye could see, with trees sparsely scattered throughout the landscape. The wind was gentle, and the scent of wildflowers lightly tickled his nose.
Tyre was a land eternally in spring. It was warm. He stretched his senses out and could feel some small animals quietly rustling around in the fields.
It was a beautiful land, but Lucian’s feelings for Tyre were bittersweet. It was him home that he had spent a lovely fourteen years with his newfound family. He would take those years over any other period of time in his over ninety years of existence.
What made him feel sour was that he lost multiple times. He lost to his aunt, he lost his arm to a cougar and he even lost that lone struggle to Eleanor over ten years ago.
He wished he cared less. He had more to care about than himself in this life but, even though he had no regrets sacrificing his arm, it bothered him. Sure, being complacent in his young childhood did not help. Even then, he had practiced for over a year and still couldn’t even scratch Monica Nox.
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It was no question that he was softer in this life, but he never thought that it would affect him so badly. Was he weaker because of his family?
“Lucian,” he heard his dad’s steady tone. Putting his existential thoughts aside, he focused on the road in front of them. There was a broken down carriage not too far ahead. The wheels were fractured and off to the side. He spotted a woman waving to them frantically, cradling a child to her chest.
“Are we helping them?” he asked as they approached.
John did not respond immediately. After a few moments of deep contemplation he finally asked,
“Let me ask you something. That’s a carriage, right?”
“Correct,” Lucian answered, slightly confused. From their elevated positions on top of their horses, it was hard to be mistaken. It was a cheaper carriage that was a far contrast from the ones they rode in the city, but he had no doubts on what it was
“Where’s the horses?”
Lucian slowed his horst down to a slower trot. His initial thoughts was that the horses were spurred loose during whatever incident damaged tha carriage. Perhaps they ran away, happy to be free of their bindings - or maybe just startled by something.
He wasn’t one to confirm answers without ample evidence, however. He fanned out his enhanced senses, feeling far more than just a few people around the carriage. As he focused, he began to pick up faint sounds of breathing and the occasional rustle of fabric in, and around, the carriage.
“The horses are about a hundred meters away, hiding behind a rock. There’s a lot of men hiding. It’s an ambush.”
His father smiled as he spoke, his tone warm and approving. "Impressive," he praised. "Tyre is a great place to live, but we need to remember that not everyone in the world has it as good as we do here."
With that, John tapped his heels into his horse's side and spurred it to go faster. Lucian followed suit, making his horse sprint past the broken down carriage. The woman's face morphed from a pleading gaze to a snarling scowl as they passed. A few men emerged from inside the carriage and behind some rocks, but they had no chance of catching a horse.
He half expected one to fire an arrow or try to chase on their own horses, but the bandits were more focused on the cast rather than the fish that already got away.
“We’re good. They’d rather wait for someone else than waste the energy chasing us,” John said as they slowed down, far away from the carriage. “That was a pretty mild trap. In these areas, people will stoop far lower than that to support themselves.”
“I understand.” No matter what world he was in, there were always people trying to deceive others. Part of him did feel for the child at first glance, but he shook those thoughts away.
He was getting soft, he mentally lamented.
“I want to let you know that I’m not treating this like a vacation, Lucian. The north is dangerous, most of the land has no centralized governments, so it's lawless. We need to take this seriously,” John warned.
“Roger,” Lucian said. John glanced at him with a raised brow, not understanding what he meant. “I understand,” Lucian clarified after realizing his error.
They continued onwards. Their horses were well bred and powerful, so they did not take breaks often. Lucian’s new body was not accustomed to a long duration of riding. His legs and hips hurt, but he kept it to himself.
The further they strayed from the capital of Tyre the more rugged the landscape became. As they approached the edge of the plateau the land became more rocky and uneven. They had no choice but to slow down their pace.
The distance they traveled, from their home town situated right in the middle of the country to the edge of the plateau, was quite impressive. The only downside of traveling so far in a single day was that they were in a barren part of Tyre and dusk was rapidly approaching.
They scouted a flat, secluded area in a patch of grassy land. The grass was tall enough to protect them from the wind and there weren’t any animals around. There wasn’t a good source of potable water nearby, but it would have to do since night was already upon them.
“It’s a full moon,” John noted as he reached into his collar and took off his necklace. He walked over to Lucian and gently placed the necklace around his son’s neck.
“What’s this?” Lucian asked, inspecting the pendant closely. It was a crystal prism shaped like a teardrop that was around the size of a golf ball. In the middle of it was a gold stone that shined with an ethereal glow despite the lack of light around them. It wasn’t reflecting light, but producing it.
“It’s a holy relic,” John explained as he continued setting up the rest of the camp. “The middle said sunstone, a special stone that absorbs sunlight and then emits it. The outside is luminite, which disperses said light in a special way. Your mother and I got this…” John let out a long exhale as the memories came back to him, “twenty years ago. Wow, I’m old,” he shook his head and laughed lightly, “Anyways, it completely wards off most creatures of the night. As long as you let it soak in the sun, it’ll create a dome like barrier that most nightmares just see as the sun. They won’t even notice us.”
Lucian could feel some sort of energy emanating from the necklace. It felt warm - inviting almost. He placed his hand directly on the pendant and held it there. After just a few seconds his hand started to burn.
It was potent, no doubt. His father seemed certain that it would protect them, so he had no choice but to believe. Still, Lucian had feelings of uncertainty.
Sunlight was a huge mix of rays and radiations that, when concentrated or given in large amounts, could cause a ridiculous list of issues. He wondered if he could get cancer, or cataracts, if he wore it for too long.
He shook his head almost comically in order to vanquish those thoughts. He was worrying too much, at this point. Different world, different rules, he reminded himself. The existence of magic was ample evidence that the laws of physics, and reality, were different. He was wasting his energy worrying.
If it protected him from the creatures of the night - the nightmares - then he would rather have his hair fall out than fight an abomination.
Lucian had never seen a nightmare before, but he knew of them. Everyone in this world grew up knowing about the enemies of all things living. Even in the most creative of fantasy books he read there would be mention of them.
There was no clear way to describe the creatures of the night. Long ago, when the sun did not shine, they were the dominant creatures on earth. They were not intelligent, but plentiful in numbers and were tenacious in their hunt for blood. Wildly, they would chase and attack all living creatures with reckless abandon, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake.
According to legend, a great mage created the sun and vanquished the creatures to hide in the outskirts of the world. Direct sunlight would incinerate a nightmare in seconds, so they hide in caves or decrepit ruins until the sun sets.
Lucian could classify ninety percent of these beasts with a term from his last life - eldritch horrors. There were many types, each grotesque in their own rights. Some were freakish imitations of humans, wearing fake flesh over their monstrous forms. Others could only be described as abominations. Malformed, sickly creatures made of darkness that slithered through the night with warped tentacles or sluggish bodies. They were nightmares brought to life, if not worse, so the term nightmare was more than appropriate.
The final ten percent of these creatures were myths. Lucian, having faced rare and unusual creatures in his last life, knew that even books written by the craziest, most ostracized people, could very well be true. The whole idea behind the upper echelon of nightmares is that if you did see one then it’ll be the last thing you’d ever see.
Books about them were sparse and usually considered fake, but Lucian enjoyed reading about them and coined his own term for the ‘fake’ creatures - cryptids. It wasn’t a term he had heard in this world, so he didn’t consider it unoriginal.
The undeniable fact was that in the current state of the world, nightmares were few and far between. The methods on how and where these creatures came from was common knowledge, and preventative measures worked wonders.
Two ways one could find a nightmare. The first was the home of all creatures of the dark - the land where the sun does not shine. On the outskirts of the known continent are places where the land has never felt the warm kiss of the sun. That used to be the reality of all of the world, but now just fringe areas far away from civilization.
There, the nightmares propagate and roam the area, free in the eternal darkness. Expeditions are dangerous, therefore rare, so how and why they are formed is a field made mostly of hypotheses.
One prevailing theory involved the second place nightmares come from - death. When a living creature dies it will eventually, over time, form into a nightmare if left unattended. The blood will slowly turn darker and darker until it's a black sludge, and from that sludge a nightmare will be born. A singular body would take weeks, perhaps even months, to get to that point. The more blood, the faster and greater the resulting creature will be, so it was prudent, in all scenarios, to cremate any and all bodies.
Embalming would also work, but that was an expensive endeavor used by nobles. Most people had the ability to conjure some sort of fire spell. It was common practice to burn the dead as quickly as possible.
Tyre was an extremely safe, well run kingdom, directly in the middle of the continent - which made it unaffected by nightmares. If one did, somehow, make it into the area the government would send a literal army to disperse them.
The safest place in the world for a human, Lucian would often hear. Residents of Tyre had no problem paying the high taxes for they received the greatest benefit of safety in return. His parents had really done well for themselves to secure such coveted land.
Nonetheless, he and his father were leaving behind that safety. Lucian already knew that he was a bundle of nerves, and forced himself to calm down.