Chapter

Dreams, Maybe

Mikel awoke with a groan. His whole body throbbed in tandem with his head.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

With each reverberation, a gong of pain ricocheted through his body.

“Oh, Gods,” He mumbled as he tried to roll over onto his side, “What happened last night?” For some reason his bed was lumpy, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar - maybe he’d bunched his blankets up underneath himself again? Maybe he was just that sore. He didn’t remember practicing with his sword or studying late into the night in a rough-hewn chair in the archive's basement. In fact - he didn’t remember much of all.

Mikel’s mind quested back, only to be met with pain.

“Ow!” He mumbled again, the sound of his voice gouging him further. What had happened indeed?

No matter - he rolled again and tried to get comfortable. He was just about to open his eyes and look around when he shifted and found his bed no longer there.

He yelled in terror as he hit open air and fell a foot to the ground and struck with a resounding bang as his shoulder met the hardwood floor.

Hadn’t he had flagstones in his room?

Mikel moaned, his shoulder joining the cacophonous pain resonating through his body in a symphony of agony. His brain hurt. His neck hurt. His body ached and now, fairly certain he’d at least bruised the bone of his shoulder, his shoulder hurt too.

He opened his eyes, squinted against the sun streaming in through a window he didn’t remember being in his bedroom, and lay his head back. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to him.

His whole body felt as if it had gone through a human-sized meat tenderizer, and his brain refused to surrender the memories of the previous day and the activities that led him to this agony.

With his arm acting as a level he hoisted himself up to a sitting position and covered his eyes with the flat of his hand and he was startled as he realized this wasn’t his room at all.

Panic flared in his chest as his exhausted and angry brain tried to process the scenario he’d found himself in. He wasn’t in his room, and by the looks of the construction of the furniture, he wasn’t at home at all.

Where Raithson Manor was all stone and hard angles, this place was more organic. Wood paneled the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. Two windows sat in the longest wall and allowed early daylight to stream in.

He only needed one glance to tell that he had no business walking around in daylight as his head sang in pain.

“Where in the hel am I?”

He was still in his travel clothes, although it appeared he’d tried to take his shirt off the night before but failed as the arms had become tangled. He felt greasy and hot - not having had the chance to shower after the prior day’s trek - the thick air in the room doing nothing to help the situation. If there had ever been a chance to forget that The Continent was in the throws of a terrible summer, this wasn’t that time.

Careful to shield his eyes from the sun he felt around on the thing he’d been sleeping on - a couch - and pulled a blanket draped over the back of his head and then down.

Hot, lovely darkness swallowed him up and although the heat and smell of his breath was oppressive and cloying, it was better than the sun. For a time at least.

Several minutes later he tossed the blanket to the side and fought back the urge to vomit.

What in the hell had he been through last night?

“Was I poisoned?”

At that moment the door banged open and a large man with a thin, white cotton shirt barged in from outside singing in a tremendous baritone - each word tingling through Mikel’s body like pins being shoved into muscle and sinew.

A broken heart is once away

from a maiden most fair!

Ne’er shift from the goal

of finding the thing in the dark and in the unknown

glittering like a cat eyed gem

a broken heart is a rare thing indeed

ne’er shift from the goal

of finding freedom from the night

finding freedom from the fright

of the sunken folk, lest their might

turn your soul into a wight.

As the big man came to the end of the verse he looked down at Mikel and barked a laugh.

As Mikel’s eyesight cleared and the pain from the song quit throbbing in his ears he looked up and grimaced as the previous night’s memories finally came flooding back. He hadn’t been beaten as he’d half assumed - and he hadn’t been poisoned, not at least by anything he hadn’t wanted to consume at the time.

He wasn’t at home - he wasn’t anywhere near home. He was in Farraway, with Helsket after a hard night of drinking and midway to Stennin in an attempt to find another of his family’s retainers. A journey he’d started months prior which had already led him to do things he wished he had just forgotten in the haze of pain which consumed him. He shifted and a memory of a certain Jewel rippled through him. Mikel sat bolt upright as his hand felt desperately around his shirt for the cold lump he knew must be there.

A cold moment of panic bled into many before his hands found what he was after.

His hands lit onto the Callisto Jewel and he breathed a sigh of relief as the icy surface seemed to leech the heat from his body with every second he held the priceless artifact. It felt good against the heat, but Mikel could, even through the drunken haze enveloping him, sense a razor edge beneath the pleasant coolness. It was an edge many had lost their lives against and if he wasn’t careful, Mikel would join those teeming masses.

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“Well, well,” Helsket said with a sly smile across his haggard face, the scar down the right side of his face tugging against his lips and casting the otherwise benign gesture into something somewhat sinister, “Looks like you need to learn how to hold your liquor, young master.”

Mikel groaned - he seemed to be doing that a lot - and then answered, “What in God’s name did we do?”

“We drank!” Helsket said merrily as he slammed the door behind him and walked over to a kitchen tucked into the corner of the small home. Mikel tracked his movements groggily and noticed Helsket was carrying a reed basket with a cloth draped over the top.

The image, incongruous as they came, was enough to send his delicately balanced head spinning anew. A giant, scarred man, carrying a housemaids basket full of food.

“And now, we’re going to eat and plan our trip a bit better. If you’d been at the helm last night we would have been somewhere between here and Tar’Xet by dawn. Not country you want to get stuck in. Not, at least, in the condition you’re in.”

The name of the city Helsket had mentioned seemed familiar, but the pounding in Mikel’s head kept anything substantial from coming up. Tar’Xet.

What did it mean?

Mikel tried to sit up, groggy, and then plopped back onto the couch. He was able to take in the compact and efficient house in a single glance and was amazed by how neat it was. The kitchen and living room were one unit, with a small table set against the wall with three chairs propped against it. Shelves lined the walls and held all manner of things - from spices to cups to jars of pickled food. It was all laid out in an efficient and pleasant fashion.

He hadn’t pinned Helsket for a good housekeeper.

Still too dizzy to sit up, he allowed his eyes to wander the walls of the front of the house and saw a number of interesting objects, but none as interesting as a large collection of books to help identify different types of birds on The Continent. By the way the spines were cracked and aged; they'd all had a lot of use over the years.

He was about to ask Helsket about the books when a wave of nausea swept over him once more.

“I think I just want to die,” Mikel said as he tried to reach for the blanket again, but paused after he burped and a bitter, acrid, sulfurous smell emerged. He didn’t want to be trapped under cover with that.

“There’s plenty of time for that later on,” Helsket said, “But now - catch.” Mikel looked up just in time only to see a cloth-wrapped bundle sailing right for him.

It struck him in the middle of the head and fell to the ground like dead weight.

“What in the hel?” Mikel asked, rubbing the front of his head, “Why would you -”

“Testing your reflexes,” Helsket said as he began juggling three similar bundles in his massive paws.

Mikel watched in growing amazement as the old, tremendous man wove the bundles in and out and up and down in a mesmerizing display of dexterity.

Suddenly, looking down at the sad bundle on the tile floor, Mikel felt woefully underprepared.

Helsket was close to three times his age, three times his weight, and had more than three times his ability to drink and function after a hard night out on the town. What hope did he have when it came to the trip he had planned?

The spot where the bundle hit ached and he rubbed it while he reached down and undid the cloth around the bundle.

Inside was a delicious-looking biscuit with sausage and egg crammed inside. The biscuit was so full the bread very nearly couldn’t contain the contents.

“Think fast!” Helsket yelled as Mikel looked up in time to see yet another sandwich bundle coming right for his head.

Mikel winced back, ready for the blow and only opened his eyes when the strike never came.

He glanced up and was amazed to see his hand had moved on its own to intercept the bundle before it ever came close to him.

“Ah yes, that’s more like it!” Helsket chortled as he wandered over to the table set with a metal pitcher of cool, perspiring water, two place settings with glasses, and more napkins in the center. A sad-looking, several days old daisy wilted in a clay vase in the center of the table.

One of the three chairs screamed in protest as Helsket plopped down in it, the old wood surprisingly holding his heft with little trouble aside from the loud popping noises from the joints.

“Bring those two sandwiches over and we’ll talk about plans once you eat.”

Helsket didn’t wait for Mikel before he unwrapped one of his sandwiches and tore into it. Mikel watched with sick fascination as the battle-scarred warrior inhaled the sandwich in two bites before starting on his second.

Minutes later and several bites into his sandwich Mikel nodded and drank down a big gulp of water. The biscuit around the meat and egg was dry but tasty. It tended to get stuck in his throat when he was eating, but the water helped.

“Well, now, how do you feel?”

Mikel finished the first of his sandwiches and rubbed his head with a wince, “Like I was run over by a stampede. Why in the hell did we drink so much?”

Helsket laughed and said, “You seemed rather intent on obliterating yourself last night. I assumed you’d done this a time or two.”

That was a half-truth - Mikel had drank before, but the one other time he’d drunk himself silly, had been an experiment of sorts. He’d been trying to see what it felt like to be good and truly drunk. The bottle of wine he’d consumed then did nothing to compare to the agony coursing through him at the moment.

Mikel slipped the cloth off the second sandwich and regarded it as it sat on the table. His stomach did somersaults in response to the smell.

After a long moment of consideration, he picked up the sandwich and bit into it with grim determination. He was starving and he wasn’t about to let the previous night’s Mikel ruin his day this early.

An hour later the two men were still sitting at the table and speaking amicably. Mikel’s backpack had found its way to the table and they had a sheaf of papers spread out.

These were the maps he’d mentioned the night before. He’d worked for many months to collect originals and to add quality copies to his collection. Inside of the pages was a complete, chronological history of development on The Continent under the current Emperor dynasty's reign. The pages documented the changing lines of counties, towns, and even in some cases, small countries as they sprung up, flourished, and died out leaving the people within their borders to fend for themselves. It was a history of conquest, ruin, and power.

Many of the maps were old enough that the edges of the paper or vellum, crackled with age. Others looked brand new and it was to these that Mikel turned more often as the conversation revolved around current geography and topography.

“I have Stennin marked on this map, as well as all the sightings of Calcifer, Sylix, and yourself.” Mikel pointed to the topmost paper, roughly three feet square with a web of roads, towns, rivers, and geographical information penciled in. He tapped Farraway where a green ink mark stood out in contrast to the black and white of the paper. Other multi-colored dots coated the map - some following distinct patterns while others were as random as if someone had used it as a board for a game of darts. The map covered the entire continent from the Western Sea, with stylized monsters coursing through black ink waves, while to the East lay the edges of the Empire, the Capitol, and the edge of the Indistar - the Empire's sworn enemy. Mikel was fuzzy on why the two states had gone to war three decades before, but he did know that several of his family's most revered stories took place in that timeline. Many of which revolved around his father, Erick Raithson.

Helsket quirked his head and nodded, “I’m the green dot - I’m guessing Calcifer is red… But who’s the blue?”

Upon examination there were roughly a dozen green marks on the map, all spots Helsket had traveled after the divesting. There were double that in red - but what was truly amazing was the amount of blue dots. Where Calcifer’s and Helsket’s dots numbered maybe three dozen together, the blues numbered in the hundreds.

“Sylix,” Mikel said before taking another drink of water. His mouth was dry as the desert to the south of Farraway and it seemed no matter how much he drank he couldn’t quench his thirst. The abnormally hot air of the brutal summer did nothing to help the situation.

Helsket whistled, “She’s been busy. You really have reports of her moving all over The Continent like that?”

“Yes - and these are only the ones I could get multiple reports on. If you were to see my map at home you’d think I’d lost my mind with the amount of blue ink peppering it. I suppose I did lose a bit of it. I’ve been working on this since Father divested you.”

Helsket whistled and nodded, regarding the young man with more than a bit of wonder.

“How’d you piece this together? Warranting the information you got was accurate.”

Mikel shrugged, “It was mostly accurate. Like I mentioned last night, Dad’s name still has pull. It was only a matter of finding the right people with the right resources to put this together. The time investment was the hardest part - this took weeks to even start.”

Helsket nodded appreciatively at the amount of work that appeared to have gone into the map.

“You’re either very good at spying or you just got very lucky.”

Mikel flushed and laughed, “I wouldn’t call it spying, I just compiled information - that’s all.”

Helsket pointed to a green dot on a small settlement to the west of Farraway, about halfway to the Western Ocean.

“Tell me about this - this specific point.”

Mikel quirked his head and regarded the spot, a town without a name marked on his map, but all the same, a green dot blotted over it and scrunched his brow for a moment in thought. The food, water, and conversation had stirred up his mind and the ache from the previous night was only a dull suggestion pounding at his temples, but his memories were still foggy.

“The report I got said you knew a girl there and when you went to visit you found out she’d married. There was something about you being chased off by an irate husband.”

Helsket laughed, “Did your report say why he was so irate?”

Mikel flushed again and shook his head, “It did - although I don’t think you need me to remind you of what happened.”

Helsket belted out laughter then and shook his head, “Turns out your information is good enough. Alright - so you’re sure Calcifer is in Stennin, but Sylix is in the wind. That's apparent from all the ink on the page.”