Disclaimer: The Secret World and all associated characters, settings, and situations are the property of Funcom and Electronic Arts. All use of them here is purely for entertainment purposes, without permission or intention to profit.

Author's Note: This section is lifted pretty much directly from the game's opening cinematic. Hopefully in writing it I've managed to preserve the enigmatic feel without making it totally bizarre. My thanks to all the people who recorded videos of this and the other cut scenes, complete with close-captioning of the dialogue, and posted them on YouTube...which was very helpful to this writing.


The Dream

Friday, October 20, 2:30AM

I hear a voice in the darkness, skull-splittingly loud, sounding like many voices all speaking as one, like the Borg in Star Trek. But I don't think I'm hearing Star Trek.

"You will see the end of days," the Voices say. "You will see the dawning of a new age."

I become aware of cold. I'm lying on something cold, hard, and lumpy while raindrops fall on my face. I shake myself awake and get slowly to my feet. I'm wearing jeans and my black and white hoody over my favorite blue t-shirt, though the last thing I remember doing is changing into my oversized PJ top. I try to remember how I got here…then I take a look around myself, and realize that's a moot point. Here is a place that can't possibly be real.

I am standing on a rocky beach in the rain, staring toward the shore, but there is no ocean. In its place is a vast void, teaming with crumbling asteroids and broken moons. I take a step back. This has to be a dream!

"To be a monarch, or a beggar," the Voices go on, drilling into my skull. "To lose everything, or to become a god. To stand with us, or against us: the choice is yours. Remember this."

Then, just like that, the Voices stop. The rain falls in silence for a moment and I try to remind myself that this is just a dream, a nightmare, and that any moment now I'm going to wake up and start getting ready for my nine o'clock class.

Then, out of nowhere, a woman in a white appears beside me: white hair, white blouse, white pants, everything. By way of introduction she says, "Be mindful of the Voices."

Before she's even finished, a man in black appears opposite her: black hair, black shirt, black pants, everything, and says, "Listen to the Voices."

"They will whisper in your sleep," the man and the woman say together.

I look back and forth from one to the other, wondering how my subconscious managed to come up with all this. It must have been working serious overtime while I was writing that essay.

"You are with the Chosen, but you must choose for yourself," says the woman.

"You are with the Chosen, but you must make the right choice," the man says at the same time.

"You are cursed with free will," they both say, first the woman, then immediately after her, the man.

At this point, I'm figuring my subconscious outsourced part of this dream to my brother. Micah always has the weirdest dreams.

Perhaps my expression of confusion gets through to them, because the man stops to explain, "We are here to guide you to the light, even if this is merely a dream."

"It's not my place to intervene," the woman interjects. "But then, this is merely a dream."

Now I am seriously weirded out. People in my dream know it's a dream? Hopefully that means it's about to end soon. Surely it's a sign that the light is creeping in through the window and my alarm will go off any minute.

But my alarm doesn't go off. Instead, the dream just gets weirder. The man and the woman both stretch out their hands. Bees flow out of their sleeves, circling around me in a spiraling swarm. As they do, the man and the woman intone: "Make the right choices, and be mindful of the voices."

"For they corrupt," the woman finishes.

"For they speak the truth," says the man.

I am hardly paying attention to either of them, since a swarm of bees is flying circles around me. I feel my feet leave the ground and I find myself suspended in the swarm. Oh, God, please let this not be a falling dream, I think to myself. I hate falling dreams. It does not help at all that I am afraid of heights.

But if anything, this dream is worse. The swarm does not dissipate and let me fall, as I fear it will, instead, it circles up, higher and higher. I gasp as the bees fly around my face and then, as if on signal, they all swarm down my throat, hundreds of them, stinging, crawling, buzzing down inside of me. I want to scream, but that only lets more bees in. And then…

I wake up, choking on something. I sit up, coughing. Whatever it was seems to go away after a moment. I look around myself. I'm in my room, on my bed. It's still night outside. I can hear the sirens of a police car in the distance. The clock on my wardrobe reads two-thirty.

I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down. "It was all just a dream," I say, though my throat feels a little raw. Probably it's just dry. I decide to get a drink of water from the kitchen and I reach for my bathrobe, draped over the chair at foot of my bed. As I do, I feel a slight tingle in my hand, but I don't really pay attention to it. I grab for my bathrobe, and as soon as my hand touches it, the bathrobe bursts into flames. Blue fire hisses all over it, burning hot and bright, but not consuming it. I stare in shock for a moment. This has to be a dream still. It has to be! Then I realize that, even in a dream, I don't want to let some fantastic blue fire to ruin my one and only bathrobe. I reach toward it slowly, like I'm trying to calm a skittish animal instead of pat out a flame. A part of me knows this is stupid, that I can't put a fire out like that, and that this fire's way too big anyway. Another part of me insists that if I can ignite a fantastical blue fire by touching my bathrobe, I had better be able to put it out by touching it again—and at two-thirty in the morning, this is the sort of logic that prevails. My hand passes into the fire, feeling no heat, and I touch the bathrobe.

Immediately, the flames are gone. I stare at my hand and wonder if they were ever there in the first place. My bathrobe is fine. I touch it once more, experimentally. Nothing happens. I get up slowly and put it on. Whether or not this is still a dream, I'm thirsty, and there's water in the kitchen.


Next Time:

Headaches and Bee Wings