Adam Wateley was dreaming. In his dream he was an incorporeal entity in the front seat of an European car, barging through a side-alley in a destitute part of Las Vegas. As he was dreaming, a man named Leigh Cromwell was driving an European car, barging through a side-alley in a destitute part of Las Vegas. The perspective of the two men was different. Leigh Cromwell saw the alley with his mere physical eyes, seeing the brown-filtered street for the dead-end that it was. Adam saw and felt somewhere much greener. All his senses engaged in the scene. His senses were covered by a thin, greasy film reminiscent of a layer of motor oil on an evaporating puddle next to a very cheap auto repair shop. Red strands of blood rage emanated from the large, corporeal man. Puppet strings made of the same aetherial film pulled at his brains. Leigh Cromwell was not himself anymore.

"Traitor! Warlock! Die!' Leigh said. The attention of both the man and the dreamer shifted. There were two people in the alley, running. One was a scrawny man in a dusty and torn suit. The other was a woman, too beautiful to be human. She wore a dress of silver cloth, and sapphires in her hair.

Adam was a passive observer here. He should have hated it. He was a man of action. But it was a dream and he knew that sometimes, in dreams you had to let go of control. So, without a particular change in his invisible facial reaction, he observed, passively. 

'I know I am, but what are you?' the man in the tattered suit said. 

'My Mark, do not play with your food,' the woman said. Her voice smelled of honeysuckle. And lies. 

Leigh Cromwell, the man driving the car raised his hand. He thrust it out the open window and from it a burst of fire flew at the pair in the alley. The man in the tattered suit, Mark, dodged behind a trash can. The woman stood, statuesque. Neither of them were so much as singed by the eruption of magical fire. Adam, now aware that he was dreaming, felt surprised that his dreams projected such a fictitious fancy. 

As the strange pair ran further down the alley, Leigh let go of the last remnants of his caution and accelerated. The sedan was too large for this path, too large by far. The mirrors were the first to go, and soon the paint scraped of the sides of the car in a shower of sparks. The pair was easy to spot, both running, neither hiding. The woman stopped. She giggled, as if at her own foolishness, and disappeared from sight. Adam could still smell, touch and taste her presence, but Leigh seemed to not have the same advantage. He focused instead on the young man in the tattered suit. He lost sight of him behind a pile of refuse bags for but a moment, but even this slight delay made him roar out in fury. 'I am coming for you, warlock. I am coming and you will die,' Leigh said.

Soon, the car crashed into a cement stair leading up and into the building to the right. As the car was now moving at a speed more appropriate for highways than walkways, the impact was enough to ragdoll the large man at the steering wheel into the window in front, cracking it. Leigh Cromwell bled from his forehead. He tried the door, but found that he could not open it enough to get out. He kicked at the front window of the car instead, again and again. Eventually the window gave and he crawled out. Adam knew that he could either remain in the car, or follow the man. As he was now fascinated by the events unfolding, he chose to follow. 

He noticed a strange dissonance in his senses as soon as he did. The man in the tattered suit was easy enough to find. Indeed, Leigh Cromwell had noticed him even before Adam had. This Mark was sprinting towards the end of the alley, where a door promised escape. According to Adam's sight and hearing, so was the woman in silver. According to his other senses, however, she was standing no more than three steps behind Leigh Cromwell. At that instant, Adam knew that both the tattered man, Mark, and the large wizard, Leigh, believed the visible, audible woman to be the real one. Adam knew also, that they were both mistaken. 

The man in the tattered suit threw a strange, bright light in the eyes of Leigh Cromwell, blinding him. In the moments that it took for Leigh to regain his senses, Mark and the woman that was not real had escaped through one of the doors at the end of the dead-end alley. Leigh Cromwell screamed in fury and annoyance. He raised his fists in the air and cursed an indifferent universe. Behind him, the woman in silver stepped out of her illusory shadow. She had a silver pin, size of a knitting needle, in her lithe fingers. In a swift and precise motion she jammed this object into Leigh Cromwell. It struck where the neck ended and the head begun. She moved it left to right, once, and the large man dropped before he could begin screaming in earnest. It was a quick death, and seemed painless, but Adam Wateley shivered at the cold and calculating bearing of the woman that had delivered it. Then, she disappeared once more, and this time even Adam's dream-senses could not see where she had gone. 

And then the dream-scape exploded in sound that permeated every sense of all dreamers present. 

'Queen steals knight. Thief. Thief Queen. The marrow of the elderly is dry, the marrow of the eldarly is sweet,' the incorporeal, emerald voice said. Then it proceeded to make suckling and gnawing sounds. These seemed to be genuine, not mere impersonations or imitations. Then, a silence, so loud that it shook Adam awake. 

Adam awoke in a plastic seat in a plastic room, collapsed with his forehead to the back of another plastic chair. It was a tube shaped room, and it soon became clear that it was a plane. The plane was flying from JFK to LAS, New York to Las Vegas, between two of the most mythologized cities on the planet Earth. Or at least in the United States of America. For having had a strange nightmare about wizards and faerie queens and forces beyond mortal ken a second before, Adam was a simple man. He did not appear boring, and not even common, but you would not look at him twice if you saw him on the street. He wore jeans, a T-Shirt with a band logo, and his hair was remarkably contained even after sleeping on an airplane. He wore glasses, that he disliked for being a little too hipster, but not enough so that he cared to replace them. If there was something to set him aside from the average man, it would be his height. He was about 5'6" and old enough to have given up hope at a very late growth spurt. 

As he was shaking off the last of the sleep and dread, the plane began its descent. Through the window on his right he saw the yellow expanse that was the Mojave Desert. There were more splotches of green than Adam had envisioned. Seeing this, Adam shivered despite himself. Green, the color, was not something he wanted to see. He looked around himself. Seeing the middle-aged black woman in the seat next to him his lips half-parted, as if he was about to speak. As he met the eyes of the woman, he stopped, closed his mouth and looked down. He looked at his phone, considering. Then he shrugged, exhaled and put the phone back into his back pocket.

It was a sane enough environment. It had been just a dream. Adam should have adjusted right away. And yet, the dream gnawed at his brain, a thin layer of madness atop the sane and logical world that he was living in. He took a deep breath and exhaled.  He realized that he had consciously exhaled four times up to this point.

He saw the world in greener shades now. What had been the certainty of dreaming was trying desperately to invade his waking mind. The dream-sight told him that the woman next to him was losing her faith in god. It was telling him that- no, he had resigned not to pay attention to whatever strange things that what must have been simple leftovers from his nightmare told him. He saw that the stewardess would ask for trash before she did. He saw himself landing safely. He saw an old man with a graying tonsure haircut killing a young man with a smile on his face. That was when he was forced to admit that he was seeing the future.

The plane landed, Adam stepped off it, there was security and there were many other wastes of time. Adam decided that he should stop the murder by the time he was in the lobby. The period between luggage reclaiming and the lobby had mostly consisted of replaying Minority Report in his head.

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A woman, no, a girl, no- approached Adam.

‘That old man does seem fascinating,’ the girl said.

‘What?’ Adam said.

‘That monk-man that you have been thinking storms at. He does seem interesting,’ the girl said.

‘Do you know that man?’

‘I know every man,’ the girl said and Adam laughed.

‘I mean personally,’ Adam said.

‘Personally I know that he is going to go to his nieces house,’ the girl said.

‘Just tell me what you know about this mess,’

‘Just? Mmm, I remember that word. It is a word of your kind,’

‘What the hell do you mean ‘my kind’?”

‘Kind? I am only kind when it works to my advantage,’

‘Get in the cab,’ the thing that was not a girl said.

Adam and the thing got into a cab, though Adam would be hard pressed to remember the steps that it had taken. One moment they were in the airport, and the next they were on the freeway, speeding by every appearance.

‘How did I get here?’ Adam said.

‘The usual way,’ said the thing.

‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘Nothing to do with them. I lost my knight. I need a new toy.’

‘Am I being kidnapped by a fucking crazy person?’

‘You are at least two thirds right about that.’

‘Why, exactly am I not freaking out about this?’

‘Endorphins. Artificially induced micro dosages of serotonin. Opium, technically.’

‘What the fuck?’

‘Only the truth,’ the thing that seemed to be the girl said.

The third time that Adam received dream visions, he did so on purpose. Terrified by the creature in the cab next to him in the back seat he tried his best to open his third eye. He chose to do this by his own free will.

Adam looked to his right, where the thing that had seemed to be a girl was supposed to be. He saw nothing. The nothing he saw was more explicitly nothing than anything any mortal sight had laid eyes upon before. In the space where the not girl had been Adam saw a coagulation of the strange film-like substance that had clouded his senses before in his truth-dreams before. He saw it concentrated to one spot. He was mostly in control of his senses.

‘What is thy bidding, my King,’ he said in contemporary Sumerian, dropping on his knee awkwardly in the back seat of a cab. ‘What the fuck,’ he said in English, shortly thereafter.

‘Good. Now, business. Murdering the murdering murderer. I enjoy English. You couldn’t make that sentence sound as crunchy in Estonian, you know,’ said the Emerald King.

‘My Lord, what is happening,’ said Adam in a strange admixture of several living, dead and imaginary languages.

‘You are my knight now. Not in the brain controlly way. Not like Leigh. They say that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. They are wrong. Delicious Adam will be a different knight. Supple. More silky, for one thing. More delicious, presumably.’ The Emerald King said.

‘What do you mean, Lord?’ Adam said.

‘Blaghrthththththyyawawqsum. Let us just go to the murderer that you were so keen to see,’ the Emerald King said.

The cab rushed to the house of the old man with the tonsured haircut.  No, no no no, not his house. The house of his blood the house of-

The Emerald King and Adam and their driver found themselves in a trailer park in the middle of the Mojave Desert. A strange place for the tonsured man to be at, as he was dorned in a grey suit, fancy shoes and he drank wine, not moonshine.  The cab that pulled up to the rattling trailer seemed out of place and decadent, even though it was no more than a simple Swedish sedan. The aluminum shine of the portable house was nostalgic, cinematic and destitute. Even from within the car the travelers could hear the arguing coming from within.

‘Guns, pain, screams, horror, fear, madness,’ said the Emerald King.

‘Shit,’ said Adam.

The car stopped and the two passengers got out. Adam rushed at the door, and the Emerald King floated a few inches from the ground.

Adam pounded at the door with his fist and the shouting stopped for a moment

‘Blue and orange and red, orange and blue. And red,’ the Emerald King said.

Adam, not knowing what to do, but having seen many a television show where the intrepid hero rescues the innocent victim, kicked at the door. ‘What the fuck?’ said a voice from inside the trailer. ‘Fuck off,’ said another, younger voice. The door stood, undeformed.  

‘Fuck, stop it!’ Adam said.

‘Who the fuck is that?’ a female voice said.

‘Why don’t you wave that gun at that?’ a male voice said.

‘Wh- Step away, we’re armed!’ another said.

‘I- I am only here-,’ Adam said.

‘Do not do this to me,’ the Emerald King said.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Adam said and bashed his entire body at the door. He headbutted the keyhole. Blood appeared soon. He bled from his brow first. Then his fists. Then a gunshot rang out and blew the trailer door off its hinges, and the King, the Knight and the three peasants first saw each other.

‘Daddy, you killed him!’ the girl shouted.

‘He, he entered uninvited. He was trying to break in.’ the tonsured man said.

‘I am not dead yet,’ Adam said.

‘Dog! Knight! Attack!’ the Emerald King said.

Adam had been a man who was proud to take his own decisions in his own hands. He had been himself at the cost of several good things coming at him. He did not obey the order, no matter how much adrenaline and rage was artificially pumped into his system by super-stellar forces.

‘Shit, it’s a terrorist,’ the man who must have been the tonsured man’s son in law said.

‘We don’t want none of your kind here,’ said the tonsured man.

‘I’m calling the police’ the woman said.

The tonsured man pointed his shotgun at Adam. ‘I am trying to stop a murder,’ Adam said.

‘Get off my property!’ the man who would be the victim of this murder said.  It is hard to tell what made the tonsured man pull the trigger. It is harder yet to know why his second shot was full of rock salt. It should not have been so, but when he pulled the trigger, instead of instant death Adam experienced pain, such as he never could have imagined sixteen hours ago. 

‘Eye for an eye, bone for a bone, blood for blood, screams for screams,’ the Emerald King said, in no language that man has been able to decipher.

Adam screamed in pain and in rage and he lunged at the tonsured man, his teeth bared. He got hit in the face with the butt of a shotgun several times, but as all feelings of pain transformed to madness somewhere between his nerves and his brains he only trashed harder when he finally got his teeth on the throat of the tonsured man. When the hot blood of the old man spurted down his nose and into his lungs, only then did he realize what he had done and he started howling. The man who would have been the tonsured man’s victim and his wife both started screaming and Adam heard a familiar voice in his head.

‘Would you like a power that would make them forget this?’

And suddenly all of the adrenaline, all of the rage and all of the madness left Adam. All he had left was the realization of what he had just done and the taste of warm iron in his mouth and the knowledge of what would happen if these two would call the police.

‘Yes, fuck, yes please,’ Adam said.

And then he had that power. He felt it in his fingers and in his cranium. He screamed a little. But then he rushed the two innocents and he pressed his hands to their foreheads. He focused and released the power that he had just inherited into those two innocents. And the two said:

‘Ie ie R’yahlan W’uad Muad’dib, H’y’yyy!’ the man said.

‘Whatsoever our lady Prince desires I I h-hyyyyyy, hwalck, Anything for the lord of the Stars! Please, please, I beg of you, let me serve!’

‘What did you just do?’ Adam said.

‘I gave you the power to let them forget,’ the Emerald King said.

‘What the- Are they going to get better? This is just shock, right?’ Adam said.

‘But they already are better,’ the Emerald King Said.

‘What the fuck do you mean?’ Adam said.

‘They have found their new brains and their new homes. Do not despair for them, for you shall suffer so much more than they shall ever see again,’ the Emerald King said.

‘You- You’re a fucking monster,’ Adam said. He rushed at the Emerald King and he punched it in the face. The world flashed red and screaming and Adam lay on the sand in the middle of the Mojave Desert, vultures circling above his head.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, my dear readers. This has been the first chapter of The Four Masters. Some of you might know what this has been drawing from; others might be coming in blind. What I will tell to all of you is that the story of Adam and the Emerald King is but one shard of the story that is to come. And, indeed, I shall give you, dear reader, some agency as to what happens next. It will be somewhat limited until all of our characters get introduced, but nonetheless at least you can choose who goes next:

1. Frankie Freeman, who sold his soul to the Devil on the Crossroads to learn to play the six string real damned good.

2. Ana Loxley, who found a gate to Hell and would not look away.

3. Mark Blaine and his faerie Godmother.

4. Continuation of Adam’s story is currently unavailable.

Secondly, you can choose how whoever is chosen approaches their patron:

1. Embrace the newfound power

2. Resist the temptation

3. Take what they need, when they need it

More questions shall become relevant as the story advances. I hope you enjoyed this installment of The Four Masters. It shall return soon.