That night, Auntie Lomain decided that Nettal should sleep by herself, and Addie had to sleep in a guest room. Auntie wanted to make sure Nettal had the space she needed to recover.
Dinner had also been subdued, with strained smiles and awkward small talk all around. Addie didn’t even know that some people actually talk about the weather.
Christena had joined them that night, and taken a look at Nettal’s condition as well. Her soul had been damaged, but she was still alive, at least. Neither Auntie nor Christena knew how long it would take Nettal to recover. Since Nettal didn’t have any magic herself, she would have to rely on Christena and Auntie to heal her soul for her. Normally, a bonded pair would do magic exercises to heal and protect their souls. Nettal was unbonded, and couldn’t do that herself. Having someone try and heal your soul from the outside in was incredibly difficult. Foreign magics never integrated perfectly with others, or at least that’s what Christena told Addie. Addie would just have to wait and hope Nettal got better with time.
To give Addie a head start on learning that herself, tomorrow’s lessons were going to focus on healing and protecting soul exercises. Christena didn’t want whatever happened to Nettal to happen to Addie, too.
“We’ll start practicing with the transcendent loop tomorrow morning,” Christena had said earlier.
Now, Addie was getting into bed, but it felt somewhat lonely in this unfamiliar house. She had Squishy sleeping at the foot of the bed with her, but sleeping in Auntie’s house without the familiar chat with Nettal made the house seem bigger than it should be. The absence felt like a cold void, creeping along her skin.
“Squishy, it’s cold in here! Come up closer to where I am.” Addie all but demanded.
Rather than respond, Squishy stood up and stretched with his whole body, like a cat. He slowly walked over to the head of the bed, walked in a circle once, and then laid down in a ball next to Addie’s side.
Addie let out a shiver and then closed her eyes. Squishy was practically a little furnace next to her. A moment passed, as the house settled into a deep quiet, the shadows of the room stretching long and strange from the candlelight peeking in from beneath the door.
Somehow, Addie still felt a cold breeze on her face. She opened her eyes again, and in her periphery, she could see the window was slightly open.
‘Ugh. I guess I’ll get up and close the window,’ Addie thought to herself.
Something was strange. Her body betrayed her with a sudden, unyielding heaviness. At first, Addie was just frustrated that she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even turn her head to look over at Squishy. She tried saying his name, but her mouth wouldn’t work right. It almost seemed like she called out his name, anyway, but he didn’t seem to stir.
But then, the fear started. Her thoughts swam through a thickening fog, her limbs ensnared in invisible bonds. Panic whispered at the edges of her mind as she strained against the unseen force. It was like the blankets were heavily weighted, or maybe someone had glued her limbs to the bed. She was stuck there, impotent, staring at the ceiling, not able to move or even ask for help. She tried screaming, but it sounded quiet, distant, as if muddied.
‘Get up!’ Addie tried, ‘Get up!’
With urgency, Addie tried to move her eyes to focus on the window, but she couldn’t. She could only barely see the open window in the corner of her vision. She was unable to so much as check that the room was safe! Anything could be lurking, there.
No, something was lurking there.
Addie tried to scream again or to sit up. She tried nudging Squishy and moving her eyes from the spot on the ceiling.
She saw the tip of a wing and a stray feather. She heard flapping near the window and saw tiny ghostly flames lick up the side of the wall.
Her struggles rebounded, as Addie tried to escape the flames. They were growing, slowly spreading across the room. Instead of a normal red or orange color, the flames were gray with the peaks turning purple.
Addie couldn’t see the flames on the floor, with her vision stuck on the ceiling, but she could still feel their heat as they began to whisper up against her blankets. She was stuck there, watching the flames spread across the ceiling and desperately trying to get out of bed.
“Wake up.”
The flames were touching her hand now. They were surely burning her, and the terror overcame Addie as the ghostly flames tried to devour her while she lay in the bed. She screamed.
Squishy’s warm paw was touching her face, and Addie sat up with a gasp.
The room was fine. There were no flames, and the window was tightly shut.
“You’re finally awake. You were calling out for me across the bond while you slept. It took no small amount of effort to wake you.” The twinkling stars in Squishy's eyes danced with relief.
‘It was just a dream,’ Addie realized.
She let out a relieved breath and readjusted her sitting position in bed to be more comfortable.
With a deep sigh, Addie tried to get her erratic breathing under control. She picked up Squishy from underneath and pulled him into her lap. She hugged him tight as she scanned the room, still nervous from the night terror.
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“You were calling out to me across our bond while you were asleep. I felt your distress, so I thought to wake you.”
“I had an awful dream,” Addie explained, “There was gray fire everywhere, and I couldn’t run away.”
“Be not afraid, little one. If it makes you feel at ease, I shall guard you as you sleep.”
“Can you check the window for me?”
“Consider it done.”
Squishy hopped out of bed and ran over to the window on the side of the room. He hopped up onto the window sill and looked outside.
“Do you see anything?” Addie whispered. She gripped the sheets tighter.
“Yes.”
“Well! What is it?” Addie demanded.
“Swamp and swamp trees.”
“Geez, don’t scare me like that! That’s not what I meant.”
Squishy started chortling. Addie threw her pillow out at him, causing him to yip and jump off the window sill. Then, he looked at her a bit more seriously.
“The window is locked and secure. Nothing lurks out beyond the swamp, either. Even if something did, Aunt Lomain controls this Area. We are enfolded in safety, little one, as sure as the stars that blanket the sky.”
Even if Squishy said that it didn’t mean Addie could just easily fall back to sleep. She laid back down, but her mind was still active. The details from the dream were dissipating, but the broad strokes still lingered.
Squishy curled back up against Addie’s side, and she felt secure enough to close her eyes again. It took her longer than normal, and a few tosses and turns, but she did eventually fall back asleep.
She had another dream. This time, she dreamt of Realmspace.
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Addie was an observer, a spectral point of view as she saw the boring stone that marked Realmspace’s ground.
An idle thought, but she knew the floor would look prettier if there was light to see it with.
Instead, she observed less physically. She saw Realmspace by watching it from above, her point of view somewhere in the sky. She saw a big spread of Realmspace below her with her spatial sense.
Slowly, she drifted. She allowed the weight of the dream to push and pull her around as it would, naturally.
She observed Realmspace as it is, without blemish. Just simple flat ground in all directions. Addie was a leaf in the wind, and she slowly but surely flew from blank location to blank location, as the dream carried her across Realmspace.
She drifted like that until she saw a blemish.
There was a... cave? Maybe, at least. She couldn’t see too well from her current vantage so far away in the sky.
Without even a thought, she drifted lower, the dream carrying her down more and more until she could make it out. There was a giant hole in the ground, breaking up the same monotony that Addie had become so accustomed to. An unusual break in the landscape. She drifted lower, gliding down into the hole. Addie supposed it must be dark in here, but it didn’t matter. All of Realmspace was equally dark. That’s what her spatial sense was for.
As she drifted lower, the hole branched off into a few tunnels. They seemed chipped, dug out by hand. Each tunnel was just large enough for someone her size to fit through. Not that it mattered right now. Addie was no more than a perspective, an observer without a body. She could have fit in the tunnel even if it was ten times smaller.
Addie was drawn into one of the tunnels in particular. She felt the Heart of Flame resting nearby. It called out to her. It spoke of loneliness and immortality.
She floated on the waves of the dream without anxiousness. There were no worries. She simply drifted along, pulled in by the Heart of Flame, until she reached a large chamber lit by an amber glow.
A creature, much like the one Addie encountered earlier during the day, dug through a giant pile of gold coins. The green-skinned, pig-faced humanoid crouched down as it dug. Eventually, it found two coins it particularly liked, and held one each in its two three-fingered hands. It pocketed one of the coins and began polishing the other coin with a torn rag it pulled from a pouch.
A giant red tail, six times wider and dozens of times longer than the pigling slithered between the giant piles of gold. Addie hadn’t noticed it at first. Its size was so huge she thought it was part of the room: until it started moving at least.
Addie’s floating perspective followed the tail up and up. Then, her perspective followed it some more. The amber glow of the room easily allowed her to see with her eyes and not just her spatial sense. The tail grew thicker as she followed it, and the scales slowly shifted to a darker red.
Finally, Addie’s gaze came to the base of the tail, where the scales turned burnt black. She followed the wide body, as large as a small house, to two large hind legs, each of the three-fingered lizard toes ending in a spiked claw. Each claw was at least as big as Addie was tall.
Only then, did her perspective shift enough to take in the enormity of the creature. A truly huge black dragon, with wings folded neatly against its back, slept among piles of gold. Except, it was stirring. An intruder in its lair bothered the dragon enough that he was waking up.
His spiky back led up to a muscular neck, with a powerfully elegant head. He had two horns on the back of his head instead of ears, and each black scale shone with iridescence. Only the accents of his body bled into a red color, the end of his tale, and portions of his underside.
The dragon opened his eyes and stared directly into Addie. Behind his eyelids sat a thousand galaxies, swirling and twinkling, only to disappear after a moment, and be replaced by another the next.
No, he wasn’t staring at Addie, she realized. He was staring at the pigling she floated next to.
“You annoying pest.” Despite his gargantuan size, the dragon’s voice came out relatively normal. Deep and masculine, but he didn’t sound distorted or growly. Just powerful.
“I told you to stop taking things from here!” And, perhaps surprisingly whiny.
The pigling stopped, realizing it had been caught, it slowly and obviously brandished one of the two coins it had taken, and then it placed it carefully back onto the pile of gold.
It made some noises as if to communicate something, but it was unintelligible pig noises to Addie. Then, it made a kind of half-hearted attempt to bow in supplication and waited in that position.
“Fine, I’ll let you go, this time. But next time, I’ll make sure you remember the wrath of a dragon!” Addie wasn’t sure if he really meant the threat.
The pigling made some kind of noise in agreement, then quickly scampered out of the dragon’s cavern.
The dragon took a big deep breath, then exhaled, with smoke coming out of his nostrils. Despite being a dreaming specter, Addie could almost smell the burning eye-watering smoke.
“Oh, good to see you all-mighty one,” The dragon muttered with a tinge of sarcasm, his voice echoing in the hollow cavern of time. “If only they came seeking the wisdom of eons, or even just to chat and give me company. But no, it’s always to steal all my gold.” Despite it all, he didn’t seem angry. Just tired and upset.
Then, his face changed, and in that moment Addie saw not a dragon, but the face of an old man. He was so, very old. And he was... lonely.
The Heart of Flame sighed, and readjusted his position, “Fine. Intrude, then leave. Steal my gold.” He rested his head back down on his front legs, and weary, closed his eyes.
“Mortals,” He sighed, “Never here for more than themselves. Perhaps one day...” he whispered, a word lost to time and Addie’s grasp, a flicker of nostalgia and hope, “...A true visitor. But no... Oh, It’s been so very long.” His words were a tapestry of countless ages and endless heartbreak. He huffed and lay back down.
In the morning, Addie woke up, with a tear running down her cheek. The dragon’s loneliness bled into her, and it persisted for the rest of the day.