Most people don’t remember dreams. They tend to forget everything the moment they wake up, so they believe their sleep was just a black nothingness where they stared upon the void without the risk of the void staring back.
What most people don’t realize is that we always dream. Every. Single. Night.
There are, naturally, ways to make it easier to remember them. The easiest by far is to have a dream diary, where one writes down everything they can remember of their night time experience the moment they wake up. Sure, usually you’ll be writing some very strange stuff because you’ll still be half asleep when you do it, but that doesn’t really matter because it’s all about training your brain.
Now, try to imagine being able to remember all your dreams. Now imagine that, instead of dreams, you have nightmares every night. And, to that, add the fact that still, as you’re sleeping, like in most dreams, you’re not aware you are sleeping.
This was what was happening to Liam right now.
He was on a battlefield he didn’t recognize. That, alone, should’ve been enough to make him understand none of this was real. But it felt real. Even if the ground was so red it was as if someone had painted it with blood, even if the sky was as red as a bloodshot eye. Even if the waning moon itself somewhat looked like an actual eye, staring at him, smiling crookedly.
Because that wasn’t really what he was concentrating on. No, his undivided attention was on the screaming soldiers around him. They had faces, they had weapons, and they were attacking each other and him. He didn’t really have time to look at the environment. Not when a soldier had planted a sword in his thigh before falling to the ground with three arrows planted in his back and throat.
The sword, as you can well imagine, hurt like hell. But the hit, luckily, or rather, unluckily, wasn’t fatal. The nightmare knew how to prolong itself. After all, it was a Skill.
Liam screamed in pain as he yanked the sword out. He didn’t care that it was a bad idea, that anyone with even the most basic medical training would say it was only going to worsen things, to let the blood flow freely. You try to make sane decisions on a battlefield.
And anyways, the nightmare didn’t care. It saw the boy had just gotten himself a weapon, one he knew how to use, roughly. Actually, it was even better that he wasn’t an expert. It would make things more interesting.
Two soldiers appeared seemingly out of nowhere and attacked, swords raised in a very offensive stance as they charged at Liam. He tried to do something about it, tried to block, to dodge, anything. But he was no [Warrior], nor a [Soldier]. He had no battle training. So, as he blocked one of the sword, his own was wrenched away from his grip by the sheer strength behind the other soldier’s hit. And the other one’s attack kept coming, the blade aimed at his side.
He screamed, remembering one of the Skills he’d gotten.
“[Lucky Dodge]!” he shouted. But nothing happened.
The nightmare laughed and laughed, for Skills and classes meant nothing here, because it had decided so. The day it would allow such things would be the day it made everything worse.
Then, an interference.
Two individuals that weren’t of the nightmare had just walked in. They looked around, then one of the two shouted an expletive and quickly left, dragging the other one out as he shouted: “Abort! ABORT!!! Red Skill Nightmare!”
And they were out.
Such a strange thing.
Then the red world began crumbling. The nightmare looked at the [Soldiers] attacking the boy, and saw the distraction had made it lose control of the attackers. The boy’s heart had been skewered and now, as it coughed out blood and stared at his enemy, he began dying.
Now, that wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all. The boy should die only when allowed to, and even then only in the ways chosen by the nightmare.
So it chose to shorten the boy’s pain.
Liam looked up at the two [Soldiers] as the one which had impaled him slowly extracted the blade… and attacked his companion.
The two fought, but he couldn’t quite see what was happening as his eyes were filled with fog.
It took Liam a few moments to realize the fog wasn’t him fainting from blood loss and dying. No, there was actual mist, red as blood, covering the landscape.
And then the two fighting soldiers stopped screaming and fell to the ground, their heads cleanly cut off. Liam looked up, not understanding, not seeing clearly, afraid but at the same time not, because one way or another this was the way it ended. He had done everything in his power to survive. He had failed, but there was reason for him to be bitter about it.
Then he saw it. The headless knight. The figure that had nearly killed him last time. Its blade was covered in blood, brain matter still clinging to the tip of the sword, as it slowly walked towards him.
It reached him and, with a clanging of armor, the armored thing knelt down and cradled his head gently.
What is it doing, he wondered.
Then he felt the hands around his neck. He felt their strength as they squeezed.
The last thing he felt was his neck snapping.
----------------------------------------
He woke up screaming and felt more than saw someone in the tent with him.
He reached for a sword that wasn’t there, trying to defend himself from that headless knight, from the monster that he was sure had nearly broken his neck. He didn’t know how he could possibly be still alive. Had the monster spared him? Decided to play with him a bit more.
He didn’t know.
What he did know was that the figure reached a hand towards him and clasped his shoulder before, with a very neutral voice, saying: “[Soothing Presence].”
Immediately Liam felt himself calm down. His heartbeat slowed from its mad dash towards a heart attack, going back to a healthy tempo, while his arms stopped searching for a sword that had never been there.
He sighed.
Then looked up, ready to thank his savior. Only to realize it was [Knight Commander] Amarie. And that he had been sleeping in his underwear.
Seldom had Amarie seen someone change color as fast as Liam did in that moment and go through so many shades of red. Some of them she didn’t even know existed.
“Th-Thank you. Now… please… get out?”
It sounded a lot more like a question than he wanted it to.
Amarie shrugged: “Don’t worry, it’s nothing I haven’t already seen.”
“That is not the point.”
She chuckled and nodded, turning around to leave.
A few minutes later, Liam followed her out, now fully clothed. He was immediately greeted by Giulia, the [Knight] on last watch. She was stoking the fire with a long stick, staring into the flames as if they contained the answer to all the questions in her life.
“Good morning, Dame Giulia.” he greeted with a slight smile.
She turned around and greeted him back with a nod, a small smile appearing on her face. She wasn’t the talkative sort, answering most questions with monosyllables and communicating more with body language and expressions. She did like to smile, and had a delightfully delicate laugh.
Not long after the other [Knights] began walking out of their tents. Most of them were wearing the leather padding that normally went under the armor so that, in case they were attacked, they wouldn’t be completely defenseless. One thing Liam noticed, after a moment, was they were all wearing their boots, perfectly buckled and fit, as if they were ready for a run.
Good mornings were exchanged, kettles were placed by the fire and jerky was distributed to all present. Then the conversations began in earnest. And the questions.
“Nightmare, am I right?” was all Neville asked.
Liam froze up, the food in his mouth suddenly losing all of its taste. He didn’t nod or say anything, but the silence was as all the answer the young [Knight] needed.
“I’d like to say I know the feeling, but I don’t. Too new to even risk getting a Red Skill.”
“Shut up Neville. No one is ever ‘too new’ to get one of those. You just haven’t seen the worst of a battlefield.”
Amarie appeared behind the young man seemingly out of nowhere, backhanding the back of his head. He shouted an expletive, causing everyone around to laugh.
In the end, Neville apologized.
Meanwhile, the [Knight Commander] sat beside Liam and began eating earnestly.
And he just sat there, trying to forget the nightmare, trying to forget the screaming soldiers and the headless knight. He tried to eat, but the food tasted like dust.
“You have to eat boy, or you’ll keel over by midday.”
“I know… I just can’t.”
He looked up at the woman, at the unimpressed look on her face, and sighed. He knew it was only a dream, that it wasn’t real. But it felt so real when he’d been in it. The pain, the fear, all of it. Had it been a one time thing he wouldn’t have cared, but he’d been told it would happen often, maybe as often as every single night, and that… it scared him.
“Want me to pity fuck the sadness out of you boy?”
Liam had been listening, waiting for Amarie or someone else to try and comfort him. He didn’t have water in his mouth, so he only managed to ‘spray’ some jerky into the fire. It immediately began burning.
That is, until about three different people blasted the flames with their own jets of water, coughing out their souls and vividly desiring they had some ear bleach.
“[Knight Commander] – cough cough -you’ve got to warn us before you say something like that.”
Liam didn’t know who’d said that, but he agreed wholeheartedly.
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Then he felt something in the back of his throat. A vibration, as if his diaphragm had decided to hiccup while also trying not to resist. The feeling grew stronger and stronger, until he realized what was happening. He was chuckling, deep in his chest.
And, when he finally understood and let it go, he began laughing, joining all the other [Knights].
Amarie smiled at that, then nodded her head.
She’d managed to distract them.
They rode for hours later. Never galloping, always at a steady pace. After all, they didn’t want to tire the horses. Or make the newbie suffer even more after yesterday’s ride.
All the while, the [Knights] talked, gossiping, talking about their families, the stupid things they’d done in their youth or while they were just new [Squires]. From drunk nights to escapades with the gentle sex to pranks to their superiors that inevitable ended badly, Liam thought there was no chance he could ever get bored with this group. They were [Knights], sure, but they didn’t look like the typical stuffy and heroic types depicted in books back on earth. They were… so humane, nearly ordinary. Maybe even more so than most people, actually.
Because they’ve seen battle. Because they’ve trained for a long time and now they can finally allow themselves to let loose a bit.
These thoughts went through Liam’s mind as they moved.
The day had started… not well, but it sure as hell was getting better.
“Traveler up ahead!” shouted Sir Pollion from the front of their little convoy.
They hastened their pace a bit, Liam managing to catch a glimpse of the traveler. She was a small woman with fiery orange and red hair, so bright he thought they had to be colored. She was wearing a cloak that covered the rest of her body from behind. As they got closer, he could see it was worn, extremely so. Tears had been patched up with great care all over it, transforming the garment in a colorful rainbow. Liam was sure that the woman would have a tale for every single one of them.
The cloak had once been black as night, probably, but the years had eaten away at the color, making it look more like a warm gray. Also, she had a hat. She wasn’t wearing it right now, instead keeping it tied to her back, a string running from left to right and going around her neck. It was long brimmed, something that would probably fit better in a cowboy film than this continent where, apparently, the weather tended to be quite humid.
Nonetheless, she was interesting.
When they finally reached her, Amarie shouted:
“Good morning traveler. Where are you headed? Would you care to join us?”
The woman turned, a slight smile on her face. Tied to her waist was a small pouch which Liam guessed, correctly, was a bag of holding. In her right hand she was also holding a hefty-looking sack made out of hemp, although the woman was carrying and swinging it around merrily as if it weighed nothing.
“Good morning, [Knights]. I guess I’m headed towards Pemos, but I don’t think I’ll be staying a lot. The winds call. But I would gladly join you. I’ve yet to see a single [Bandit] on these roads, but you never know.”
Amarie smiled: “We take great care to suppress those leeches miss... oh, right, where are my manners. I am [Knight Commander] Amarie. May I know your name?”
She climbed down her horse and offered a hand to the woman with a reassuring smile.
“A pleasure to meet you, Dame Amarie. My name is Mina. I am a [Wanderer].”
“Welcome to the Kingdom of Nagid, miss Mina. And what an interesting Class. I didn’t know one could get it.”
“Everything can be a Class Dame, especially if you spend a lot of time doing the one thing. I like to travel a lot. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m from Aknos.”
She pointed at her hat as if that could explain that last statement. Which it actually did for all of the [Knights], but Liam was left confused because, up until now, he hadn’t cared to ask about this world’s geography. In his defense, he had always sucked at that subject in school.
Mina then turned towards the rest of the group, her eyes alighting once she saw Liam.
“Are you perhaps escorting another traveler good [Knights]?”
“Yes, you could say so. He is to be apprenticed at the capital to a local [Crafter]. Our [King] chose him personally for the job.”
The [Knight Commander] was careful not to reveal too much when she answered the woman. Who, in turn, nodded and stared at him.
“I would love to follow you, Dame Amarie. And, as luck would have it, I won’t even slow you down.” her smile grew slightly.
Amarie cocked an eyebrow in curiosity: “Do you have a horse stuffed in that bag of holding, miss? Because otherwise I don’t see how that would be possible. You don’t have to worry, we can take our time.”
“Oh, no no no no no. I would never mistreat an animal that way. I have something better: [I Can Keep Up]!”
When she said the last words something… shifted around her. She didn’t change one bit, but at the same time she seemed a lot more energetic.
“How about we begin to move, before my Skill runs out?” she proposed.
And move they did. They rode down the road, their horses at a light trot, not fast, but certainly faster than a walking human. And yet, Mina kept up with them. Her steps weren’t longer, and she wasn’t walking faster. Actually from his point of view, the woman was moving at a very slow pace. And yet she was keeping up.
Is this the power of Skills?
The answer to that was, obviously, yes. With limitations, sure, but Skills could allow you to do anything and everything at a high enough Level.
The [Wanderer] whistled a little song as she went, a cheerful tune that put a smile on everybody’s face.
“What’s the song’s name, miss Mina? I feel like it needs some words.” asked Amarie.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just an old song my gramps used to whistle when he camped with me in the woods by the Arborges Mountains. Good man, couldn’t sing to save his life though, so he only whistled. Never managed to remember the name.”
“Understandable. It is quite a nice song.”
“[Knight Commander], why don’t you join her with you ukulele?” asked Neville.
“And fall to the ground to be stampeded on by your horses? Not a chance.” she chuckled, and was soon followed by everyone else.
For the next two hours they managed to keep that pace, then had to slow down as Mina’s Skill stopped working. She said it would take around twelve hours for it to come out of cooldown, and told them to leave her behind if they were in any hurry. But they weren’t so they slowed down and kept on walking.
They stopped for lunch, rested for an hour, then were back on the road until the sun began going down at around five o’clock. At least, Neville said it was five o’clock after looking up, unwittingly recreating a scene from Crocodile Dundee.
They put down their tents, built a campfire, placed down their chairs (stored in the dimensional bags) and were finally ready for dinner.
They ate the same thing as the day before, because those were the standard traveling rations. At least whoever had developed this had thought about making two different sets of foodstuffs: one for lunch, the other for dinner.
And that’s when Mina made herself a lot of new friends: “I have some sweets I took from the last place I stopped in, Clio. Do you know it? The city west from here?”
“Yeah, I was there when we took over. People didn’t even try to put up resistance, they just shrugged and kept on going on with their life. I hear they make some kind of fried sweet?”
“Yes, they call them Fried Sweet Bread or something like that. Not a very good name, but they’re amazing. I’ve got some, here, try them.”
She opened her bag of holding and, a few moments later, took out a dozen… Liam’s eyes nearly exploded out of his head. Those were some honest to god churros.
He nearly lunged towards them, then calmed down and took one nearly reverentially. He bit in, and was in paradise.
“Just like mum used to make them,” he sighed.
“Really now? Interesting. Where are you from, if I may be so bold? You don’t look like a local,” asked Mina. Her face still held that smile, but there was curiosity in her eyes. She’d inadvertently inclined her head, like a fox observing something curious, comparison that fit her even better considering the color of her hair.
That’s when he also noticed that her eyes were heterochromatic, one brown, the other light red. Strange, and unusual, but after all he’d witnessed up until now he wasn’t even surprised.
“I’m from London. Quite far from here, actually. A lot. But my mother used to make these. She called them churros though, not whatever monstrosity those people called these. Though, they are good.”
Mina nodded at his answer, but for a moment, when he’d said he was from London, one of her eyebrows had shot up in her hairline before she could get it back under control. He noticed, but didn’t care. There was no way anyone would know about that city, much less where he was actually from. She was probably surprised because she’d never heard of the city.
The evening went on. They laughed and talked, ate and played. Liam won a few silver coins when playing a game of dice, wisely deciding to leave the impromptu table afterwards because he was already sure his beginner’s luck was running out. There was something in him that kept telling him to stop. When he tried to dig into the sensation, he discovered it was coming from one of his Skills: [Luck Bank]. Apparently, he was using up what little luck was stored in there, and he would be in the red if he played even another round. He shivered as he thought about what would happen if he allowed that.
In the end, Amarie played her ukulele again, enchanting everyone anew, and then they went to sleep.
Mina had placed her own tent: it was small, but extremely well kept, the canvas walls completely white, with not a speck of dust on it.
“It’s another Skill: [Tent: Total Cleaning]. Was my second uncommon Skill, and I think of it as one of the best I have.”
Then they went to sleep.
More or less.
In Liam’s case, less. He sat on his small cot, still wearing his clothes, with no desire to fall asleep. Why couldn’t he have been an insomniac? It would’ve been so useful right now.
His tent flap opened and someone walked.
Liam looked up… and saw Mina.
“Excuse me miss Mina, what are you doing here?”
He was sure she’d decided to go to sleep. She had no reason to be here. Or had she.
The woman, so cheerful and carefree the whole day, filled with songs and stories, looked extremely serious right now. It was like she had become a completely different person.
“Your name is Liam Johnson, am I right?”
He froze at the question. He had never told anyone his surname, not even to King Tibur. How did this woman know?
“[Please Answer], yes or no?”
He tried to say something, anything, other than yes. He was getting a bad vibe out of this woman now. He was actually starting to feel a bit scared. Yet, the moment he opened his mouth, the only thing that came out was a “Yes.”
He slapped a hand over his mouth, but it was already too late.
Mina smiled. Then shook her head, then chuckled:
“Of all the things… it’s almost impossible, but that old bastard was right. He’s done it. After so long, he’s finally done it. I thought he would fail, but here you are.”
She began laughing, hard. Liam hoped someone would hear her and come to check. But nobody came, not even Pollion, who had first guard.
“Don’t worry, they won’t disturb us: [The Dealmaker’s Silence].”
“Who are you?”
“I told you, I’m Mina. A [Wanderer]. I never tell lies Liam, remember that. I made an oath, after all. And I have no ill intention towards you. But I have a job to complete. My side of an old Deal to go through.”
She fished around in her bag of holding and, after an entire minute, took out a big envelope that was as thick as the length of his thumb and had the dimensions of a page. All in all, it looked like a big book. Red string bound it up, crisscrossing all over it, held in place by a single wax seal at the very center.
“This was paid for a very long time ago. It is yours. Do with it whatever you want.”
That said, she walked out of the tent.
And Liam was left alone with the package.
He looked around, uncertain about what he should do. Should he open it? Was it dangerous? Mina had said it wasn’t, but could he trust her?
Something in him told him he could. After all, she never lied.
He broke the wax seal, the strings holding the package closed slowly falling to the floor as he began untying them. When those were gone, he carefully opened the paper, trying to glimpse what was inside.
He saw paper. And words.
Definitely not a book. No cover.
He ripped open the paper, and saw a pile of pages of something. They were all finely written in an easy-to-understand handwriting, all in English.
He began reading.
I, ………………………., in full control of my cognitive abilities, by signing this contract, accept what is written as follows:
Upon the day of my death, be it of natural or unnatural causes, my soul will become the property of Liam Johnson. It will not be harvested by Death and brought to the afterlife to be judged. It will not be trapped on the land of the living in the form of a ghost or banshee and will not be used in the creation of any form of undeath.
Liam Johnson accepts to take care of my soul, keeping it conditions of acceptable decay, and giving it a purpose before one of the previously stated collateral changes take place. Failure to do so on his side will result in immediate death and destruction of his own soul.
To avoid this, Liam Johnson will store my soul inside a component part of his body before an acceptable receptacle is created and given.
This contract is binding for both sides from the moment it is signed. It may not be rescinded in any circumstance. Doing so will result in the instantaneous death of both parties.
Signature
………………………….
………………………….
Liam stared at the piece of paper. He read the others, saw they were all the same, and decided he would rather go to sleep than deal with whatever this was.
The next day they arrived in Pemos. Mina was nowhere to be found next morning.