~AN~ *bows* Thanks for the pointers, Nix. I've read over this thing at least seventeen times, but as any author knows once you miss an error the first time or two it never pops out at you again…and my beta reader's currently too busy to read such a long story, so I'm afraid there's gonna be an error or three. I'm trying to catch them, but obviously one or two slip by anyway. Thanks for being so helpful!
Oh goody, now I get to do more ranting. I do love ranting, you know. ^_^
Nightmaren Theory Num. 2: Dreams, Fears, And An Author's Tears---This Is What Nightmaren Are Made Of
Since the beginning of time, before even Littlefoot was around, one question has burned in the heart of man: What are nightmaren made of?
In my stories the point hasn't actually come up yet, and therefore I don't have much on this topic yet. As I said before, I only formulate these "theories" as they fall on my head…but I've started addressing it right now, so I guess I'll come up with something, right? *nervous laugh* Eh heh heh.
…
*thinks*
…
*continues thinking*
…
…okay, I think I've got something here. So far my ideas are pretty much as follows.
Nightmaren are made out of negative energy: the emotions such as disdain, non-righteous anger, apathy, cruelty, etc. Ideya are positive energy; you know the five. Hope, Purity, Knowledge/Intelligence, Maturity, Courage. The Dream World itself, and all therein and attached to it, in my stories, is made out of a more neutral and stable kind of energy: I call it base energy.
Dreamers can alter their surroundings slightly. They can mold base energy to a certain extent, although not with any great amount of control; more often it is a subconscious memory or thought that shapes their powers, not they themselves.
Wizeman can mold negative energy on a much larger scale. The things he has made out of energy are negative-, not base-energy based, unlike the terrain and the buildings that were already there. (More on the 'already there' theory another time.)
Ergo Maren: negative energy. Ideya: positive energy. Dream World and filler: base energy.
Now I know that the first thing at least one person is going to say is "use the Force, Luke!!" But hear me out. When I talk about energy, I mean something rather like the energy in our world, become a sort of all-purpose self-powered building material. Think cells.
Humor the insane girl and her absurd theories.
Disclaimer: "I am sooo glad that's over."---AC
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along,
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there must always be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner…
Musee des Beaux Arts, by W. H. Auden
Chapter Five:
Though They Have Eyes
Gillwing entered the Great Hall, looking about hopefully before realizing that the object of his search wasn't there. He looked at Clawz and Puffy with a puzzled air. "Have you seen Jackle?"
"Just left," mumbled Clawz through a mouthful of hair. He'd found a tangle under his forepaw and was currently struggling to work through it.
Gillwing sighed and turned around, ready to comb the entire Dream World all over again if necessary to find his friend; Puffy stopped him. "You might want to leave him alone for a little bit."
He looked over his shoulder at her. "Why?"
"He wasn't really feeling that well," she explained, not bothering to go into detail for the simple-minded nightmaren. "He might prefer being by himself for now."
"Oh. Okay." Gillwing settled himself down in front of the fire, curling up like some gigantic, monster dog. His shadow danced on the wall, a dark beast wavering there with skin of stones and eyes of flame. For some reason, looking at it, Clawz felt a shiver run down his spine. After a moment he managed to shrug the cold feeling off, and went back to detangling his fur.
Luna marched into the barracks, still the tangle-haired fury, now ticked over having gone on a wild goose chase for half the afternoon looking for Reala. Maren around her glanced up questioningly.
She looked around. "Anyone seen Reala?"
"I have," replied a cold voice, somehow managing to be shiver-inducing despite the humor. The object of her search stepped into view. "You are looking for me?"
"Lord Reala." She bowed quickly. "There is a very urgent matter that must be brought to your attention…"
"What is it?" he asked, already turning away. "And make it quick," he added. "I was just starting something."
"A golem has been sighted in Mystic Forest."
"A golem?" He turned back to eye her. "When?"
"Several days ago."
"Several days ago," he repeated. "Why was I not informed of this before?"
"The ones that saw it apparently didn't share their experience until today," replied Luna. "I myself didn't hear about it until just an hour ago."
Reala blew out a quick breath, muttering something to himself as he did so, and turned away. "Very well. From now on I will be informed the minute something of this importance happens, understood?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Dismissed."
"Yes, my lord. Is there anything you wish me to do about this matter?…"
He waved her away. "No. Just have everyone keep their eyes open."
"Their eyes open?" Her expression was flustered. "But my lord, this is a golem…"
"I don't have the time for running down a sighting of a supposedly extinct animal," snapped Reala, half-turning to give her a chilling stare. "I am carrying out the desire of Lord Wizeman. I have no time for shadow chasing."
He turned away. "You were leaving?"
Luna blinked, unsure. "Yes, I was, Lord Reala…"
She turned away, looking shell-shocked. A golem in the forest, and no one was going to do anything about it?
There was a chuckle to her left. A nightmaren wearing red and brown grinned at her, his crooked smile like a jack o' lantern's. "You look like you just swallowed a frog."
She snarled a "shuttup" at him as she passed, and stomped out of the barracks in high dudgeon. What was wrong with these people?
Reala muttered something to himself about baseless reports and unkillable rumors as he brought his attention back to his current duty. "Face me," he barked.
The young maren gathered about all turned their heads towards him on instinct, shooting each other questioning glances as they did so. He began to pace back and forth between the rows of beds.
"We are embarking on a mission to conquer the Waking World," he began. "And therefore we must be ordered and ready. Starting now, each maren will have one certain duty to perform. There will be no jacks of all trades.
"You!" He pointed at a random nightmaren. The boy being singled out jumped.
"Yes, sir?"
"What is your duty?"
"Uh…I, uh, fight, sir."
Reala sighed. This was going to be absolutely migraine-inducing. "But what is your duty?"
"Uh…" The boy glanced to one side as his neighbor whispered something in his ear. "To serve Lord Wizeman, sir!"
Reala's icy gaze focused on the one who had come up with the answer. "You. You say your duty is to serve Wizeman?"
The slightly more quick-thinking one, who just happened to be Luna's heckler, nodded. "Yes sir."
"How?"
"How what, sir?"
"How will you serve him?"
"By fighting for him, sir."
Reala closed his eyes for a moment, releasing the boy from a blue stare. 'Somehow, despite the fact that they know all the answers, we aren't getting anywhere…'
"Very well. Can you give me a fairly accurate description of your profession?"
"Gathering Ideya, sir?"
"That was before. Now that we're taking over the Waking World, what is your profession?"
"I'm…a hand-to-hand fighter, sir."
"Bingo."
The boy found himself again the attention point for a startlingly blue gaze. Reala allowed a small smile to touch the edges of his jagged mouth. "That's what we're looking for."
He turned his head to include the rest of the room in his glance. "By the time we're through, every one of you will be able to say without a doubt what you are and what you do. This is our current goal. Is that clear?"
There was a round of "yes sir"s.
He smiled again as a rather childish notion entered his mind. "I can't hear you."
"Yes sir!"
"Louder."
"YES SIR!"
"Good!" He favored them with a proud smile. "Good. You're learning."
Nightmaren straightened as he began to evaluate them one by one. 'Now comes the hard part---figuring out what we need, and how much of it we need.'
Turning sharply on his heel, he strode towards the door. "Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we will begin organizing into ranks. Be ready."
He listened to the murmuring that set about as he exited, with the sentences 'I don't think I'm gonna like this' and 'what did he mean' in large amount. Yes, it would be quite a chore to whip these young maren into shape. But he would do it, and he would do it well.
After all, it was his duty.
Clang, clang, clang.
Amaranth gripped the metal tongs tightly, muscles rippling along his powerful arms. With one skillful motion he flipped the steel blade clutched in the tongs' hard grasp, releasing it to grab it again with a more comfortable hold. Again his hammer rang against the metal. Clang, clang, clang.
Morgen's head peered around the blacksmith door, his fairy-like hair drifting about his face from the waves of heat, silver eyes glinting with all the brightness of a newly-polished dagger hanging on the wall. He whistled.
"Whew, this place is a scorcher, isn't it? How d'you guys stand it?"
Apathy, bent over the bellows, looked up long enough to answer. "It isn't that bad."
"So says Path, who would continue to say so should the sky fall on his head," laughed Morgen, cocking his head to look at the master blacksmith bent over his anvil. "But what about you, Amaranth?"
"Hold up, Morgen!" shouted Amaranth over the ringing of steel upon steel. "I'm almost finished with this one---and so help me, if you make me fumble with your talk I'll hit you instead of the blade!"
"Me? Purposely distract you from your work?" Morgen's voice was filled with innocent protest, as was his face. "Never in my darkest dreams did I desire to distract you from your duty! Hey, how many d's did I use in that sentence? Sounded like a lot."
Amaranth had to force himself to keep from laughing, and therefore possibly making a mistake. Morgen began counting out loud. "Let's see, darkest dreams---that's two---did I dare to desire---wait, did I say dare? No, I don't think I did---but it sounds good!---did I desire---that's four---to distract you from your duty. That's six."
"That's enough," retorted Amaranth, flipping the metal once more and setting to work on the other side again. "Now shut up until I'm through!"
"As you wish, O Most Muscular Master of the Blacksmithy!" Morgen bowed low, pulling his long blue cape about him to make the gesture more dramatic. Amaranth ignored him and concentrated on finishing the blade.
Clang, clang, clang. The metal was taking shape under his fingers; soft and hard components had been combined together, folded over and over to meld into one solid blade. The two never completely mixed, however, and this was what Amaranth wanted. He had only to wait for the right texture.
Clang, clang---clang.
The last was the sound of his hammer being dropped. He was done. Gripping the blade tightly with the tongs once more, he pivoted on his heel, trusting the metal deep into a barrel of water standing nearby.
A cloud of steam, accompanied by a loud hissing sound, rose from the mouth of the barrel. Amaranth waited patiently. Slowly he drew the tongs back out of the water, the newly-finished blade hanging from their grasp, dripping wet and rippling in the light. The blade itself was rippled, the soft and hard metals forming into a single sheet like the surface of moving water, the steel held in a flowing form of metal. In the flickering, glowing light, the water looked almost red in color; for a moment the blade seemed to drip with blood.
Amaranth laid the finished steel on a cloth, his eyes running over it proudly. It was a good blade---it would make a fine dirk. Light but strong, and very beautiful.
"A lady's weapon," he remarked out loud, turning to face Morgen and wiping his hands on the leather apron bound about his waist. "A weapon of grace. That will not be a man's blade."
"I only pray that no lady ever has need to defend herself with it," replied Morgen, silver eyes twinkling.
Amaranth's own grey eyes filled with a strange light of thoughtfulness for a moment; then he smiled, the dirt and soot on his face not making the gesture any less welcoming. "So, you silver albino of an actor, what do you want, eh?"
"Oh, just a hundred blades or two, you ox-bodied man of a blacksmith, eh," replied Morgen, imitating his friend's body posture and voice to perfection. Behind them Apathy smiled gently.
Amaranth eyed Morgen's impression of himself; then he threw back his head and laughed. "You're a natural, Morgen. Smudge some dirt on your face and you could fool my own mother!"
"Well I always was rather partial to acting, you know," replied Morgen, his tone lengthened to sound more philosophic and old. Amaranth laughed again.
"My friend, if only you could be an actor and nothing but an actor---you'd revolutionize your profession."
"Ah, if only I could," sighed the silver-haired maren. He brightened. "But to get down to business…I have a rather large order for you."
"Oh really?" Amaranth began cleaning a blade with a rag as he talked. "How large are we talking?"
"Very large. As in, several dozen blades."
"Several dozen?" Amaranth paused in his polishing to stare at his friend. "Are you out of your mind?"
"Well, let me think on that one for a bit," joked Morgen, assuming a thinking pose. He soon returned to seriousness. "I really do need several dozen, though. Thirty at least. Reala's doing a major overhaul of the entire army's system, moving every maren around to the place he thinks they should be in---and that means I've got more orders for weapons than I know what to do with."
"Can't you find some extras somewhere?" Amaranth was polishing the sword blade again, having worked out of his initial shock. "Several dozen blades will take me months to create."
"Believe me, Amaranth, I'm trying! I'm looking in every corner and around the hallway and in all the extra closets and I think I've even looked under all the dust. I just can't come up with enough to meet the demand."
"I believe you," sighed the blacksmith, hanging the blade up along with several others that were waiting for hilts. "I'll try my best, Morgen, but I can't make any promises. Thirty some-odd blades is a heavy load."
"Tell me about it." Morgen showed his sympathy very plainly. "And I'll be grateful for the slightest help, I assure you. But it wouldn't hurt if we could get one or two in kind of quick…Reala was a bit annoyed that I couldn't come up with much right away…"
Amaranth nodded understandingly. "Of course. I have a few that only need hilts---I'll have them bound up and sent over by tomorrow. That ought to be enough to take the heat off of you for awhile."
"Thanks." Morgen looked relieved. Then, as always, his mood shifted. "So that's that! I'll be seeing you around…gorgeous dirk blade, by the way."
"Thank you." Amaranth's face shone with pride. "It's a lovely blade. It'll make a fine weapon for some young girl."
"And I sincerely hope she never has to use it," returned Morgen, and turned to leave, giving Apathy a quick salute and a silver wink as he passed and getting a meek nod in return.
Amaranth watched the weapon caretaker go on his merry way, eyes troubled. "That's what I'm afraid of," he murmured. "Not so much for the girl---but for you. You're not a fighter, Morgen."
Beside him the dirk blade shone, flickering red and shadow in crimson ripples that disappeared when the fire fell lower. Some day soon it would ripple crimson again, and the color would not be removed so easily.
NiGHTS stared up at the stars. Or, what he could see of the stars. There were too many clouds scudding across the sky for more than a small patch of blue to show through here or there. His eyes were fixed upon the largest of these patches, where a single lavender star shone brightly. A very bright, cold, lone lavender star.
A cloud passed over his patch of sky for an instant, and he blinked, broken out of his almost trance-like reverie. He'd nearly dozed off. How long had he been here, staring out the window? Hours, at least…
He waited impatiently for his star to come back, but the clouds didn't want to uncover it again. Sighing, he turned his gaze downwards to stare at the plains of Nightmare, newly covered with the shades of night.
His mind wandered across the landscape, where hills and trees were shadowed in the rippling forms of cloud-shadows; however, it did not stay there. Almost without his realizing it, his thoughts began to circle back, coming to the castle once more to focus on a single room on the second floor. His brother's room.
Reala. He was there; NiGHTS could sense him, feel him through a faint, inexplicable bond that he and Reala shared, and that Reala refused to acknowledge. NiGHTS knew that Reala could feel it quite well, and simply didn't like the thought of being bonded so closely to somebody. But NiGHTS knew there was something there; he could focus on his brother's being almost as if he could somehow feel his energy. If he concentrated hard enough, he sometimes fancied he could hear a faint heartbeat beside his own.
Tonight that bond was strangely muted. He could only barely sense his brother's presence, even though they were quite close in distance; the ghost of a heartbeat was not there. It was as if he were far off from his brother, and moving farther.
Perhaps he was, in a sense. Reala was…different, somehow. Odd. Too angry to be Reala. Wizeman had made him different, and NiGHTS didn't like it when Reala was different; he wanted his brother the way he always had been. He wanted his brother, not some cold, unfeeling general. He wanted the brother he'd always known.
He wanted Reals to come back.
Reala shoved his candle onto the table beside his bed, grabbing at the book on military strategy that nearly fell off as a result of his slightly careless placement. He moved to put the book down, but paused while doing so; his eyes moved unbidden over the book's rather plain binding. Military Strategy, the cover read. A Treatise Upon Battle Tactics And Fighting Styles For The Taming Age.
The Taming Age---that was what, four, five hundred years ago? All the way back when unknown creatures and mythical monsters had roamed the land still, back when fighting was still necessary. 'The writer of this book knew what he was talking about. Now that was an age of power!'
His lip curled into a slight sneer. 'Unlike the present day. Half of those rookies don't even know how to wield a sword!'
This was not exactly said rookies' fault, as they had all been created after the Taming Age, when fighting had become unneeded. What was there to fight? Dreamers? Nightopians? Plants?
However Reala was not considering why the younger generation was inept in the ways of fighting. He was considering what their ineptness would mean to the mission: the mission to take over the Waking World.
'They're going to slow us down,' he muttered mentally, as he got in bed and pulled the silky covers about him. 'They need to shape up, and fast. They need to realize how real this is, that it isn't a game. They need to see what it's really like.'
Of course, 'what it's really like' changes depending upon which person you talk to; an optimistic person will say that it's really a bright, cheerful world out there. A realistic person, on the other hand, will say something quite different. What it's like isn't nice.
They would see what it was like for Reala soon enough.
Jackle lay in bed, eyes dancing over the shadows that moved sluggishly across the ceiling like wide, ragged ghosts. His pulse was racing.
'I know a secret,' his mind sang. 'I know a secret you don't know, I know a secret that you don't know! I know a secret, I know a secret, I know a secret! I know a secret I can't tell you, I know a secret---no one can know! I know a secret, I know a secret, I know a secret you don't know!'
"I know a secret," he whispered to the heavy, suddenly stifling night air. "I know a secret, and no one can know!"