ten: to sleep, perchance...
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Dinner was a predictable mix of excitement and nerves. And stew.
Madame Razz tried to magic up dessert, but it went awry; Teela, who knew a thing or two about unreliable spellcasters, was safely out of range when Madame said "lake" instead of "cake" and a great deluge of water rained down. Mostly it landed on Bow.
So. Not a total failure.
Luckily, one of the other Rebels had found a bush full of juicy, purple berries, which made an excellent dessert - even if they did have to use leaves as plates. They sat around the fire, talking and eating, as dusk deepened into night and people began drifting away to catch some sleep.
Teela had assigned herself last watch, but she was still awake long after everyone else (except Mally, on first watch) was snoozing. Thinking about attacking the harpy stronghold with a bunch of green recruits, a kid, one soldier, and a witch who couldn't cast a spell straight… it kind of made it a little difficult to relax.
"Thank you, Captain," Mally said quietly from the opposite side of the dying fire. She poked a stick into the embers, making a brief flare of reddish light. "For helping us to rescue the queen. No matter how it goes tomorrow - thank you."
Teela shook her head. "Don't thank me yet."
"No. Hope is our strongest weapon against the Horde, and we've had precious little of that lately." Mally stared off into the darkness, face drawn, and Teela wondered if she was thinking about her son.
She wondered if Father was thinking about her.
Of course he was.
Her chest constricted, and she decided it was time to go to sleep before she got maudlin. "You know when to wake me?" she asked, standing, leaf of uneaten berries in hand.
"Yes, Captain," Mally said, poking at the fire. She gave Teela a lopsided smile. "See you then."
Teela made her way to her sleeping roll, tucked between the roots of an enormous tree with pastel green-and-yellow bark. What to do with her uneaten food? Her first impulse was to chuck it all into the woods for the animals to enjoy. But she paused as an old, fuzzy memory floated up to the surface.
Some fairy story Queen Marlena had read to her and Adam, back when they were still too young to read on their own. Something about leaving gifts. And getting shoes in return? Or maybe it was enchanted armor? Whatever.
If Twiggets were going to invade her space every night, she might as well get on their good side.
Teela covered the berries with another leaf, and rested it where the tree's roots made a flat shelf.
"I hope you guys like berries," she whispered to the shadows. "And, I dunno, maybe instead of shoes, you could leave me some weapons. Just a thought."
She settled in, using her pack as a pillow, and drew the blanket up.
She was asleep within minutes.
And then she was dreaming again.
Funny how she could tell right away, because she usually couldn't. Also funny how she knew that the nondescript, neglected back alley she was standing in was part of an Eternian city – one she'd never been to before.
It was dark here. Nighttime.
There were three people in the alley: two women and one wizened old man. The old man was cowering on the filthy dirt of the alleyway, a hand clenching at his injured side. One of the women stepped forward to stand over him, the butt of her staff striking inches from his face.
"This situation seems familiar," Evil-Lyn said to the old man, her voice razor-edged. In the violet glow cast by her staff's orb, she looked inordinately pleased.
"Have mercy!" the old man said, crossing his scrawny arms over his face.
Evil-Lyn raised her hand. Magic flared to life around her fingers; she flicked them upwards, and the old man was abruptly hauled into the night air. He hung there, floating, helpless to do more than glare balefully at her.
"I was merciful before, Marzo, when I gave you back your amulet," she said, a small, cruel smile on her face. "And look at how that turned out."
Teela looked back at the old man. Count Marzo! Of course. He hadn't caused trouble since Skeletor's Council of Evil had been thwarted, although come to think of it, He-Man had reported seeing Marzo with Evil-Lyn recently.
Apparently the partnership hadn't ended well. Big surprise.
Count Marzo spat on the ground at Evil-Lyn's feet, his ugly face twisting up further. "Stupid witch! Playing with powers beyond your ken -! All of Eternia will be destroyed for the sake of your vanity!"
Evil-Lyn moved as if to strike him, backhanded, across the face, then arrested the motion – but not before Marzo cringed away.
That'd been the point, Teela realized; Evil-Lyn had wanted Marzo to flinch, to be afraid. It had worked, judging by his angry expression.
The witch's smile, meanwhile, grew larger and no less cruel. "On second thought, perhaps Hordak would like to mete out your punishment personally. I imagine he has quite a few ideas."
"Bah! I won't help you," Marzo said with a sneer. "It's a fool's quest, anyway. No one can open a portal to Despondos without one of Hordak's places of power, and they have all been destroyed."
"That… is not… true," the other woman said, speaking for the first time. Teela startled; she'd forgotten the woman was there. Her voice was a pained, rasping wheeze, as though her lungs couldn't quite handle the same air that everyone else breathed. Each word seemed to cost her.
The woman glided – not walked, glided – into the circle of light cast by Evil-Lyn's staff, but some of the shadows dragged along with her. She was swathed head to toe in red and black robes; a red hood and scarf hid her face in permanent darkness. Two sickly yellow eyes glowed out, and in her green-skinned hands she held Count Marzo's amulet.
Teela squinted at the gem in the amulet. Wasn't it supposed to be some kind of ruby? It looked black.
The woman looped the amulet around Marzo's neck. It pulsed and hissed with black energy as it settled against his chest. "And you will… be… of service… to Lord Hordak."
Marzo cried out, back arching, bones cracking and shifting into his other form. More black energy curled around him, like smoke. When the magical lightshow was over, he lifted a blank face to the robed woman and said, tonelessly, "I am pleased to serve Lord Hordak."
The woman's glowing eyes narrowed, and she wheezed and coughed. It took Teela a moment to understand that she was laughing.
Teela's skin crawled, and she took an involuntary step backwards.
Elders, she thought.
You are not safe here, a voice whispered in her ear.
Teela whirled around, but there was no one behind her. And when she turned back, she found herself standing in broad daylight on the roof of Castle Grayskull, where she and He-Man had once fought alongside a dragon – but it was and wasn't the same roof. This one was white and gleaming. No dragons, either.
Ugh. Dream whiplash again.
She walked to the crenellations and looked out across the land, already suspecting what she was going to see.
No thick, forbidding forest; no abyss; no desolate fields of rock.
Instead, there was a prosperous-looking village not far off, and farms, and a well-traveled road linking these to the castle. The base of the castle buzzed with activity: people arriving, people leaving, carts, animals, food smells, laughter, someone singing, sentries changing their posts, warriors in armor strutting around, court ladies gossiping, men arguing, children shrieking at play. Normal life for a castle.
Teela drew back from the edge. Okay. It was a vast improvement from Evil-Lyn and friends, but still a little creepy. Grayskull wasn't supposed to be alive. It was supposed to be a – a mausoleum. A big artifact for Skeletor to hunt. Of course the Sorceress lived in it, but she was more like a caretaker than a resident, right?
Movement flickered in the corner of Teela's vision, and she spun around.
The woman who was and wasn't the Sorceress – Veena – was disappearing down a flight of stairs that most definitely had not been there a minute before. It was the play of sunlight on Veena's feathers that had caught Teela's notice.
"Hey, wait!"
Veena didn't wait.
Teela ran to the stairs, hoping that they wouldn't vanish into thin air. They didn't, though they did plunge her into sudden darkness when the stairwell turned sharply. She slowed, one hand resting on the wall, while she waited for her eyes to adjust. Then she hurried on.
After a few more turns, the stairway ended, and Teela found herself stepping out onto a wide balcony – the upper level to some kind of grand hall. There was a pyramid-throne at the far end of the hall, with golden wings sweeping up on either side. Teela wasn't sure if this was really part of Grayskull or not; her knowledge of the interior didn't go much beyond the drawbridge.
For some reason, though, she thought that it was.
Veena stood at the railing some distance from Teela, hands resting lightly on the stone, her face an unreadable mask.
Teela bit her lip, thinking, then joined her.
Veena didn't look at her, or acknowledge her presence in any way. Instead, she continued to gaze down upon whatever was happening on the hall's floor far below. Teela decided to follow suit.
Two figures were walking into the hall: the Sorceress (the actual Sorceress, this time), and Adam.
Teela's heart leapt, and she opened her mouth to call out – but then she remembered that this was a dream. That wasn't really Adam down there, and she was not going to magically tell him that she was hanging around an enchanted Etherian forest, if he and Father wouldn't mind coming to get her.
She shut her mouth.
"…and Man-at-Arms must continue searching," the Sorceress was saying in her soft voice.
Teela's heart leapt again at the mention of her father. She glanced over at Veena. Still staring.
"But we've been searching!" Adam exclaimed, frustrated. He pushed a hand through his blond hair, leaving it mussed, then gestured broadly at the hall. "We've searched the entire stupid planet! Not even He-Man can find her."
There was a bitter twist to the last sentence that made Teela blink. She'd never heard Adam talking about He-Man like that.
She looked more closely at her friend. Because it was a dream, even from this height she could see that Adam was exhausted: dark smudges under his eyes, skin pale, shoulders slumped. He really had been searching for her – and losing a lot of sleep in the process.
Teela didn't know why her father wasn't in this part of the dream, but it was just as well. She didn't think she could handle seeing him looking so worn and worried.
"Adam. Teela may no longer be on Eternia," the Sorceress said. She didn't look so hot, either. Still recovering from King Hiss' venom, probably.
Now Adam looked alarmed. "You're not saying – she's not – she's still alive, right?"
"Yes," the Sorceress said, swift and certain. "I would know if she was not. However, the spell that Evil-Lyn cast could have transported Teela to another planet, another dimension, or another time. It is a possibility that I have not wanted to consider."
Teela was expecting another outburst from Adam, but instead he squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. His hands had clenched into fists, and when he spoke, it was to the floor. "So how do we get her back?"
Adam, Teela thought. Her hands had clenched into fists, too. She hated seeing her best friend that miserable, even in a dream. In that moment, she would've given anything to be beside him.
"I shall–" The Sorceress broke off, pressing a hand to her forehead. Then she gasped and began looking about wildly. "Teela?"
"What?" Adam reached back to grab the hilt of the sword on his back. "What is it?!"
"I sense her presence. It is faint, but…" The beak of the bird headdress swung upwards, in Teela's direction.
Teela!
That hadn't been out loud. Teela felt it reverberate inside her mind, shocking her into place, her fingers splayed on the cold, ancient stone of the railing.
An iron hand gripped her forearm, pulling her away from the railing and out of sight of the two figures on the floor. Just as quickly, the somber walls of Castle Grayskull faded into a colorless fog.
Teela looked at Veena, who had yet to let go of her arm.
Veena looked back at her. Sorrow had etched small marks around her eyes and mouth, but she seemed barely old enough to be Teela's mother.
"It is not yet time," Veena said. She had the same trick as the Sorceress: a quiet voice that echoed. "Much remains for you to do on Etheria."
"This isn't a dream," Teela heard herself say. She pulled her arm away; Veena didn't stop her. She took a step back, then another. Trying to put some distance between herself and the not-Sorceress, between herself and this craziness. "Is it. This – this is all really happening. Who are you?"
Veena held her gaze for a long minute, her face a mask. Then she sighed and looked down again. Her wings pulled in close to her body, and she started to fade into the fog. "You must remember," she said softly. "It will take all the children of Grayskull."
Teela frowned. She didn't get it. "What does that mean?"
But the woman was gone: vanished into the mist.
Teela turned around, a full circle, seeing nothing but endless fog. "What I am supposed to do?" she shouted.
And then she woke up.
Jolted awake, more accurately. With a very undignified snorting sound and hands flailing to grab her weapons.
Great. Some fearless leader.
Mally's quick footsteps came her way. "Captain?"
"I'm fine," Teela said. She looked around the camp to make sure no one else had been disturbed; they hadn't, but she was having difficulty shaking off the dream. "What time is it?"
Mally looked skyward. The enormous moon was low to the horizon, leaving the sky full of stars. On Eternia, Teela could calculate time, location, and direction by the stars, but here she had no clue what the patterns meant. Good thing Mally did. "Midnight, or close enough."
Teela glanced around again, and this time her eye caught on the spot where she'd left the berries just a few hours earlier. The berries were gone. In their place were five tiny pouches, made of leaves haphazardly stitched together. Not that Teela was great at sewing herself, but this looked clumsy. Childish.
She scooted closer and cautiously opened one of the bags. It was filled with a glittery, powdery substance, orange-red in color, faintly glowing in the moonlight. A girl not raised by King Randor's Man-At-Arms might have stuck a finger into the powder to investigate further, but Teela's reaction was to hold the bag a cautious distance away from her, being careful not to jostle it unduly. "What's this?" she asked Mally.
Mally crouched down and leaned in, squinting at the powder. "Oh! Oh, wow. That's giggleberry powder."
Teela's eyebrow lifted of its own accord. "Giggleberry powder."
"The Twiggets make it." Mally gave her an appraising look - appraising and respectful. "They must like you a lot."
Teela looked down at the pouch, then up into the deeply shadowed trees. No tinkling laughter, no little eye-lights… but that didn't mean they weren't there.
"Okay," she said. "Giggleberry powder. Great."
Mally grinned at her. "It doesn't sound like much, does it? But wait till you see the jealous looks tomorrow."
Teela closed the pouch in her hand and pocketed it. The other four bags she handed to Mally. "Here. Share the jealousy. Meanwhile, I'll take over the watch," she said, pushing herself to her feet and stretching.
"Aye, Captain," Mally said. It turned into a yawn halfway through. She sketched a mock salute and tromped off to find her own bedroll without a backwards glance.
Teela took a seat by the remains of the fire and rubbed her hands over her face.
So. Much. Weirdness.
She thought back wistfully to the days when she was just bait. That had been nice. No portals to other worlds, no dreams that weren't really dreams, no dire warnings falling solely on her shoulders...
The immensity and urgency of her mission suddenly threatened to drown her - or swallow her whole, like one of Mer-Man's fish monsters.
But she was better than that.
She straightened her spine and picked out a star. Who knew, maybe it belonged to Eternia. "I'll be home tomorrow," she told the star. "Just one little thing first."