So! This is what happens when you go on a Magi binge and re-read Darth Drafter's HP/SM/Ranma x-overs at the same time. Credit to Darth Drafter, by the way, for the ideas. The wonderful, mad ideas . . . Enjoy!
'Sinbad sure knows how to throw one hell of a party', Alibaba thought to himself a bit wryly, trudging his partied-out self to the room he, Aladdin and Morgiana had decided to share. He never thought one day he'd think nothing of sharing a sleeping space with others again, but he was grateful for their steadfast, friendly warmth. He might've gone mad from sheer loneliness by now without them. 'Just wish he knew how to lower the level of merriness a bit, or'd at least left me out of some of it. The others had fun, though, and I'll recover. All in all, a good day'.
He flopped onto the always-weird-unfamiliar-familiar softness of the rich people's bed (he never really got quite used to it in Balbadd, though he grew accustomed to it eventually. Roughing it on the road as a caravan driver, then through various inns here and there, and then Sindria's extravagance? Alibaba sort of gave up after that), adjusted until comfortable when Morgiana and Aladdin joined him, and slowly slipped into sleep.
He had the dream again.
It always began the same, and it wasn't at all frightening, was the thing. He was walking down a road, like you'd find anywhere, though he couldn't pinpoint it exactly, because it was always different. The landscape was ever-changing, as you'd expect in a dream. One moment it was the blazing desert heat, another down a windy grassy plain, another over a chill rocky mountain, another through a muggy lush jungle.
Always, a bit of walking - a long time, and not long at all, as dreams do - he came to a fork in the road. Two ways, that seemed the same at first glance, but differed wildly the further down you looked.
Both paths were covered in gently rolling fog, moving in the exact same swirling patterns.
To the right, it was dark, and one got the feeling that things waited just off the path to snag the unwary traveler. It gave off a feeling of creeping malice, knives in the back, and poison in the food. A perilous path.
To the left, it was not well-lit at all, but easier to see than the other, and one got the feeling a road well and often traveled. Danger, of course, as life does, but somehow ordinary. A common path.
Alibaba had this dream often, and it never changed. He tried, as much as he could, to go down the left path, but sometimes he tripped on something. Sometimes he didn't watch where he was going, and he took a wrong turn. Sometimes he could correct himself, sometime he couldn't. It was the road of life he walked down, and mistakes were made. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Something changed.
That night, as Alibaba walked along his ever-changing road, when he came to the fork, he was surprised-but-not-surprised, as one is in dreams. The road forked three ways this time.
The perilous path to the right, as usual. The common path to the left, as usual. But the third straight ahead. . .
It was like unto the others, and nothing like them at once. It was fogged the same, in the same swirling, rolling fog, but it was bright. Details faded as it went on, as the other two did, but this one was bright.
Bright and shining, gay and glad, forever into the golden dawn. Alibaba couldn't help but step onto it, enchanted by something so . . . hopeful.
Light blinded him-
O~O~O
- and he was somewhere else.
A cave tunnel, with crystals growing out of the walls and ceiling, softly glowing enough to see the way by. Alibaba walked forward, of course. There was something at the end he needed to see. The certainty of that went bone deep, and he didn't doubt it in the slightest.
When he walked out into the open cave, he had to stop for a moment in overwhelmed amazement. Prismatic crystals, large ones, everywhere. In the middle of the room was a spring, bubbling up cheerily from somewhere below, covering the center of the cavern neatly. And in the middle of the spring was one huge crystal, throwing rainbows all over the walls from the sunlight streaming down. It was bigger than an Imuchakk man, and for a moment Alibaba couldn't do anything but gape in astonishment, then he realized there was a shadow in the big crystal. No, not a shadow, that was movement, someone was in there-!
Aladdin jolted awake at the loud yell somewhere above his head, seeing red-pink hair fly around Morgiana out of the corner of his eye as she whirled around at the side of the bed back to its occupants. He tumbled around in the covers a moment, half-aware and half-really not, because it if wasn't him or Morgiana, then Alibaba-!
Was sitting up in the middle of the bed, panting unevenly and wild-eyed, shaking hard enough Aladdin could feel it without touching him, reaching out to the end of the bed blindly, as if trying to stop someone from falling of a cliff edge.
"Alibaba?" Morgiana asked gently, staring at their King with wide, worried eyes. Aladdin just about jumped out of his skin when Alibaba jerked to look at her, looking through her for a moment before he focused on her.
"Morg . . ." was all he managed to say, dazedly not-focusing on her. He was calming down, but still trembling faintly.
"Nightmare?" Aladdin croaked, then winced. He must've been snoring with his mouth open again, it felt like a scorpion had made its bed in there. He swallowed, felt his dry throat click unpleasantly, and could've blubbered on Morgiana in gratitude when she absently brought over a glass of water (left there the night before in case of exactly this).
"No." Alibaba whispered. He was still unfocused, and now he was squinting like the soft morning light was too much. "The opposite, I think. Maybe." He looked over to the west wall, looking through it and not seeing it at all. And frowning. Not sad. No, this was his planning frown. He was silent a few moments, in which Morgiana and Aladdin exchanged glances and decided to leave it alone until he talked about it himself. "I need to ask Sinbad a few questions." He said abruptly, startling Aladdin almost enough to spill his water. Throwing off the covers, he sped around the room hurriedly but neatly, fussed at his hair a moment before giving up (again, he did it every time he had access to a mirror and whenever he or Morgiana asked, he just looked at them as if they were mad, because he really didn't notice himself doing it, it was just part of his routine) and stalked out of the room at a fast pace.
Aladdin scrambled out of bed and scampered around the room to get presentable himself, getting Morgiana to help with his hair, and they were off after their King.
They should've been worried, and they were, but . . . somehow, everything seemed new. Grand. The beginning of an adventure.
Morgiana and he exchanged glances, speech-without-words of people who knew each other well enough not to need them, and grinned.
'I can't wait!'
If you liked it, leave a review and tell me what you think. Please, if any of you have advice, constructive criticism, what have you, share. I'm pretty sure this thing is gonna be a monster.