Sarevok felt a soft, silky finger caressing the nape of his neck. He opened his eyes lazily. Where was Mei? The woman was gone, and he was sleeping on a lush grass field, sun shining on him.
The person who had touched him was a stunning beauty. Pale, perfect face, coal-black unblinking eyes. Lips red as a drop of fresh blood, and shiny black hair swirling around her moon face like midnight. Sarevok felt dizzy.
- "Where is Mei? Who are you?" he wanted to know.
- "Your lady love didn't follow you to this part of Yume-do, beautiful Sarevok. And I... well, you could call me a friend," she said. She had a beautiful voice, melodious. A bit like a waterfall you could listen to for a long time and forget about your aims and desires.
- "Yume-do? The Realm of Dreams," Sarevok stated, fighting the grogginess. The surroundings were pleasant enough, but he still felt oddly alarmed.
The woman laughed. It was a silvery, carefree laugh. Sarevok felt an unpleasant memory surfacing from the depths of his unconscious, for too short a moment for him to properly grab and analyze it.
- "I am impressed, gaijin. No doubt your... former lady love told you of this. Or perhaps miss Mei? But no matter, you are right. This is the realm of concept, the place of possibilities. What can be dreamed, or what could have been all exists here."
- "Of course... friend, when you say 'exist', you mean something very complex," Sarevok said. He felt more stable now.
- "But of course. A man like you should know that existing is never simple. Do you exist? Did you, when you were dead, did you when you had no physical form? Would you, if no-one remembered you?"
- "Stop playing games, for I have important things on my mind. Who are you, and what do you want of me?" Sarevok said irritably. He tried to give form to the unpleasant memory, to figure out why the seemingly so non-frightening scene and company put him on edge.
- "Is that any way to talk to a friend? Perhaps I just want to give you pleasure... perhaps I want to help you to realize your own best." She came closer and grabbed Sarevok's arm in a very companionable manner.
- "You have nothing I desire, whoever you are."
- "Ha! Do you think it went unnoticed by me how eager your male member was in your sleep as you held the bamboo spirit girl? In fact, still is..." she reached her hand and brushed the body part in question, and Sarevok, blushing, angrily slapped her hand away.
- "But she is young and foolish. I could show you pleasures you can not dream about, bushi..." Her smile was wicked and smug.
- "You will have to do better than that," Sarevok said incredulously. "I have no doubt that there are individuals with remarkable technical prowess in the art of making love. However, I am a man who makes love to a soul as well, and for all I know you don't even have one. My desire for Mei is not a weakness, nor something I seek to get rid of. We will fulfill our passion once the time is right. The time is not right at the night of the day when I buried my lost love. I have been threatened, lured by promises of riches and power unimaginable for mere mortals... and all you offer me is prostituting yourself? No, dream apparition. You will have to do better than that."
The first flash of anger briefly flickered in the woman's eyes like a shred of a cloud bypassing the sun. Soon she was smiling again, however.
- "Indeed? Very well. Follow me, to something that might have been. I know an early dream of yours, bushi. A dream that once burned your soul so that it called for me in the recesses of Yume-do like a will-o-wisp in the darkness of night. It burned so that it created its own plane here. Lost in the infinity of Yume-do it would be... but I see where others do not."
She conjured a portal and dragged Sarevok along.
They stood at the foot of a huge throne. The throne was as if carved of black obsidian, and demonic, twisted faces and skull motifs decorated it. In front of the throne there was an altar, and fresh blood flowed on it. People, cultists wearing cloaks, their hands covered with blood, were kneeling and chanting.
The woman pointed at a balcony, and Sarevok could see an enormous back of a large warrior. He would recognize that armor anywhere. The two-foot long spikes, the mailed hands, the visor.
He crept nearer.
- "Go on, Sarevok... he can't see you."
The avatar was even larger than Sarevok himself was now.
- "HAIL!" Ten thousand demonic warriors greeted him from the sulphury grounds below.
- "Hail, my minions!" the voice boomed in the vastness. "We have been victorious, and that cowardly usurper Cyric slain! In the name of God of Murder, march and wash Toril with blood!"
- "HAIL! Sarevok son of Bhaal! God of Murder!"
The troops made the ground tremble as they thumped their halberds down.
The avatar entered the hall and climbed to the throne. A blonde woman entered from behind a curtain. She was surrounded by a shimmering golden glow, her hair piled on the top of her head, wearing a red cloak. She sat at the feet of the throne and smiled seductively.
Suddenly Sarevok remembered the unpleasant memory. Cythandria! The woman reminded him of her!
- "Look at this! What happened to you that you became such a sightless worm, a pitiful creature crawling in the mortal puny realities? But a small twist of fate and this could have come true! Look at it! The mighty Cyric slain, and your armies taking over the whole Toril! If you only embrace your potential again, you could have much more than this!" The dream woman was contemptuous and eager at the same time, really coaxing Sarevok.
Sarevok's golden eyes flashed. She grabbed the woman's arm.
- "So this is your game! I can not blame you for the existence of this sick place, for it is my fervent dream of lies that created it, no doubt. But look!"
Sarevok marched toward the throne now, dragging the woman. He showed Cythandria away and pushed the visor of the avatar's helmet up.
The angular face was as if sculpted of animated stone. The eyes were there, but they were not living, shifting light like Sarevok's own. They were empty, just staring ahead.
- "This is not me! It is a vessel indeed - a storage place of malevolent energy that should stay dead and luckily did. What is me, Sarevok, the real me, is less than nothing. Gone, used! Eaten away! And you would lure me with THIS? Mock my quest of atonement, my love for my family? You know nothing! Never again shall I enslave my soul to fever-dreams of iron-fisted power. If that is the only thing you can dream of, you have less than a dirt-poor peasant starving to feed his children."
The rage of the woman's face was a sight to behold, and she unleashed a horrible jolt of searing energy toward Sarevok. Sarevok woke up to his own scream, and the frightened Mei faced him, her eyes large and glittering in the night.
