Chương 5: The Dream

I haven't dreamed in years, not since I became a Revenant. Of the rare times I chose to sleep during Novos' campaigns, they were dark and dreamless nights. Part of me thought that I'd lost the ability to dream entirely, as part of my undeath. So it was a surprise, some time into my first weeks in Tsukio, that I found myself in the midst of a dream. No, a memory was perhaps a more accurate term. It was from long ago, before the Wight. Before Novos had gained full control of the eastern part of Endres.

I'd been tilling fields in the hot sun, my muscles burning with the kind of exertion I couldn't feel anymore. There had been chatter and laughter around me, because my friends and I had been working the field of an old friend that day. He'd been waylaid those past few days, dealing with the burial of his mother, and so the lads and I had decided to chip in with his harvest. That was what you did back home, you lent a hand.

"Damnation," I had uttered, my voice cracked and hoarse.

"When in blazes did a layabout like you plant so much grain? I can feel the Old Stranger breathing down my neck, I won't last at this rate." My friend, Tekus, had grinned at me.

"Found the time whenever I weren't busy tending your sister's garden." I snorted at him.

"Smart arse." And we'd all had a good laugh at that.

"Papa, papa!" The sweet, adorable voice was music to my ears, and I had turned to see my daughter jogging up the fields toward me. Casea, the only thing of worth I'd ever made in this world. Her crimson curls bobbed with very step, and her broad grin could have lit up the darkest night.

"Yes, monkey?" I'd asked, crouching to tussle her hair. I realised then that she'd been holding something behind her back, and she whipped her hands around to reveal a great hairy beast of a spider. I nearly jumped in shock and the six year old had cackled at me like a mad witch. I sighed, unable to stop myself from smiling while Casea set her hairy friend on the dirt to scuttle away.

"That girl of yours is a courageous one, Tarion!" Tekus had said, barking an excited laugh.

"Aye. That's one word for it." I had tussled her hair, smiling while she grinned at me. A beautiful smile, just like that of her mother. Another of our friends, portly and bearded Grint, had let out a snort of laughter.

"Sure that house 'o yours is rife with bugs."

"Believe me." I had started to rise, grimacing at the familiar pops in my lower back.

"You don't know the half of-" Horns had sounded across our village, blaring in a panic. All eyes had turned to the horizon, where a small crowd gathered to stare westward in shock. I had lifted my daughter without even thinking of it, holding her close while I squinted for a better look at the horizon. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Blue pennants of the Holy Kingdom flapped in the distance, held aloft by a myriad of cavalrymen.

I had seen the golden stag of Rhonde only a few times in the past, but I knew at once what it was. Our village, small and insignificant, had not thrown its lot in with Novos. We were not really subjects of anyone at the time, loyal to nobody but each other. And that had meant nothing to the ragged mad dogs that the Rhondian army had sent roving our way. The dream became a nightmare, and flashes of smoke and fire tore my perspective through a myriad of horrible sights.

The village of my home set ablaze, friends and family trampled by horses or run through by soldiers who were more like mad dogs than human beings. I saw my wife, my dear Lydia, cut down by arrows as we tried to flee.

"Go!" she'd shrieked with all the breath left in her lungs, her dark hair plastered to her face with her own blood. She was one of the luckier women, considering the monsters then 'holy' kingdom unleashed upon us. I know how my daughter died. I can never forget how she died, the image of her glassy and lifeless eyes burned into my mind. But I do not care to repeat how she died, for it is a wretched thing and I don't think her memory should be tarnished further.

An arrow had brought me down, and a second had kept me from rising... and I had passed out at some point in the chaos of it all. Somehow, when the raiders had left and the inferno had been doused by the soft rains, I awoke to find myself alive, but charred from the flames and crushed from the stampeding of many feet. But I was alone among the dead, in that stinking ashen ruin that had once been my home.

I was left breathing, barely alive, while the carrion descended and picked clean whatever the Holy Kingdom had left behind. I don't know how long I was down there, drifting in the twilight between life and death. Particularly when I came in and out of unconsciousness so frequently in that vacant ruin. Morning one second, the dead of night the next, then the afternoon of the next day when next my remaining eye blinked. But whenever I was conscious, my mind roiled with thoughts of bitter hatred.

Of destroying the men who had destroyed my home. And then, all of a sudden, the crows had taken flight while the sound of weighty hooves drew nearer and nearer to me.

"Oh... still alive, are we? One of a kind." The voice was soft, refined, but carried with it an edge that terrified me to my core, even at that moment. A shadow fell over me. All I could do was drag in a rasping breath, my one good eye scarcely able to look up at him.

"My. I can sense such hatred inside of you. A wellspring of boiling rage, desperate to break free." A hand reached toward me while the sun broke through the clouds above, wreathing my 'saviour' in a brilliant golden glow. Light danced along his pale and slender digits, the rings on his fingers glinting in the sunlight.

"Do you want revenge? To destroy those Rhondian dogs who did this to you?" A grunt, almost like agreement, rose in the charred wreckage of my throat. It was a horrid, gargling sound, wind whistling in the holes that had burned through my flesh.

"Then... take my hand." And so I had summoned whatever strength I had left, my trembling and scorched fingers to touch the imperial fingers offered to me. And when we touched, it was as if a white hot inferno blazed to life in my breast, every nerve in my body alight with the kind of agony I had never felt before or since. And then I woke up. I sat upright on the thin roll of bedding I'd bought from Mikan's store, the night breeze chilling the cold sweat on my skin.

My jaw was set in a scowl, and I stared off into the distance through the dusty shell of one window frame. It was long ago. Casea and Lydia were long dead, same with all my friends. Same with even the bastard who'd put them down. But the wounds still sting. And all the time and distance in the world would not help with that. A long suffering sigh hissed from my mouth, the cords of my neck briefly flexing.

"Why now, of all times?" Back home, the preachers said that Maurus, Goddess of Night, gave people vivid dreams when they were in need of guidance. But what kind of guidance could I pull from a memory like that? It felt more like my own damn mind was playing a trick up on me, dredging up memories just to hurt me. I decided, then and there, that I would avoid sleeping for some time.