A completely unedited one-shot. I...um...yeah.
Nightmare
He's had this dream before, he knows he has. The smoke and the cries and the stench are just too familiar. He holds a knife in his hand, and he thinks he can remember where he got it but he cannot be sure. He sees the shapes in the mist and fear stabs through him, but at the same time he knows they cannot hurt him. It's only a dream.
He stumbles through the mist, over rock and dirt and the stubs of things no longer growing. The screams and shouts are loud around him, almost too real. A monstrous thing rears up out of the fog in front of him, and without barely thinking about it he plunges his blade in deep. It gives the pitiful howl of a dying animal and collapses in on itself, in and in and in until it does not exist anymore. He sighs, wipes his dirty forehead with his dirty hand, and staggers on.
He loses track of the number of shapes he kills. Some of them are large and some small and some much too humanoid for his liking, and all are intent on killing him. He vaguely wonders why he bothers with them. It's just a dream, after all. He wonders what happens if he gets killed. Will he wake up? It always happened that way before, but with dreams you can never be sure.
He hears a moaning somewhere to his right and veers to follow it, already knowing what it is and yet unable to stop himself. His dream-feet won't obey him. He almost trips over the source of the noise—a man, lying in the dirt. He is gone from the stomach down.
He shakes his head and stumbles on, tired to the bone and forced to keep going. He knows what he will hear, any second now. He wants to cover his ears, to wake up, but he can't. His body won't obey him.
And there it is. Far away ahead of him, someone screams. It's a torturous sound, the sound of fear and death and agony. Sounds like it have been reaching his ears for a while now, but this one is different.
He knows that voice.
He breaks into a staggering run, knife held out in front of him as if to ward off threat. Somehow he manages to avoid the demons around him; somehow, he makes it to the place of the scream unharmed.
The man is lying facedown on the ground, black hair fallen over his face. The dirt has turned to mud around him as blood flows freely out of the gaping hole in his chest. He moans faintly.
"I'm here. I'm here, you're going to be fine, I've got you. You're going to be fine, I promise." He whispers the words into the other man's ear, even though he knows it's not true. Not even magic can help this man now. Alright, this is over now, he says to himself. This is where it ends. This is where I wake up.
The man in the dirt tenses, and using the last of his strength, rolls over. His eyes focus with effort on the man above him, and he makes a half-hearted attempt at a smile. "Magnus," he whispers. "Magnus, I love you."
And it's then that Magnus realizes he's not going to wake up.
I'm really sorry. I promise I'll dig up a nice fluffy thing to post soon.