"End of the fifth day… Rankings are… huh. Thought I'd fixed that."
Part 27: One Last Dream
Nagi hit the bed with a light 'thwump' and yawned, stretching as she did so. In the time it had taken her to clean up after a meal at the hotel Pronto, Fret had already conked out an obvious victim of a food coma. He was sleeping deeply and peacefully, in sharp contrast to how Nagi had been sleeping the past few days. Most of the time she was simply dragged off to sleep against her will, but tonight she felt more at peace. Slipping beneath the covers and feeling the cool but comforting bedsheets over her and laying her head on the massively oversized pillow, she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the still-present well of fear that bubbled silently to the surface the longer she spent her eyes closed. Controlling her breathing and trying to relax, impossible though it seemed to her, the exhaustion once again took hold and pushed her back past the brink of consciousness.
When she woke, acrid smoke scorched the back of her throat and sent her reeling awake – to a smog-ridden great hall, a four-poster bed in its centre and she, spiralling out of it and onto the mats of the floor below. A nameless, faceless solider slammed open a sliding door and nearly chipped the wood to pieces whilst doing so.
"Princess Nagi!" He yelled, his voice barely audible through the ringing in her ears and her inability to adjust to the entire situation. Even as it came into clearer focus, it joined a cacophony of screams and booming thuds and crackling wood and other sounds of riotous chaos only now spilling into her eardrums.
"We must flee, now! It's Albion, they've overwhelmed us, broken through. Now they're af– CAH– URK!" Two throttled gasps escaped the messenger's throat before all that was audible was bloody gurgles from the knife thrust squarely between his back. He sprawled out on the floor, dead, blood still pouring from the wound in his back and through his mouth, dampening the mats a sickly, deep brown. His assailant, an equally nameless, faceless assassin unit gave the body a brief pat-down with his eyes before advancing.
"Sorry about this. Rules of warfare and all." He lunged at Nagi, but instinct kicked in and she ripped one of the posts off of the bed – she was the protagonist of this dream, after all – and held it like a staff, her body low and legs wide apart. Despite the ornate violet kimono she'd spent days dreaming about Lord Tomonami sweeping her up off her feet in, this was surprisingly easy. She waited for the assassin to finish his advance forward, then struck the base of the staff with the palm of her hand, sending it jolting forward, the inertia almost causing her to lose her grip on the weapon. It smashed into the side of the trash mob's head with a resounding 'thwick', causing him to be knocked out cold. As if on cue, a pair of sturdy hands gripped the unconscious body by its feet and tossed it limply out the wooden bars of a window, the resulting crashes against rough tiles audible even despite the chaos around her.
"You throw that man as if he was as light as air. I would expect nothing less, Your Wretchedness." Princess Nagi bowed to the imposing figure of Lord Tomonami.
"He pretty much was," a humourless Tomonami scoffed back.
Nagi made her way towards the window, smoke still clogging the back of her throat. The large white castle she had often imagined herself in during those days daydreaming of being in the Elestraverse was now being reduced to cinders, roaring flames shooting out of uncountable locations around the castle grounds. In the courtyard a bloody battle raged on, troops from Albion spilling through the splintered remains of once proud wooden gates and scuttling down the high stone walls like ants, aided by ladders, the height of which Nagi could barely comprehend. In all her dreams, day and night, this castle remained her untouched sanctuary. Even though she may slumber the next night and wake up to see it unharmed and Lord Tomonami greeting her in her room with a bow, seeing it in a state like this just left her feeling numb.
Nagi felt a harsh grip on her arm as Tomonami yanked her away from the window and towards the staircase. Smoke billowed up from it in dense grey plumes, causing even Tomonami to pause and think. Eventually he opted to take his shirt off, confirming to Nagi this was indeed a dream she still had some sort of control over, and sliced it in twain with his blade.
"Use this." He thrust the cloth into Nagi's arms before tying a makeshift mask around his face. The haze was making the long hallways of the castle nigh impossible to see clearly in, acting as a fog, and the heat on the top floor was becoming unbearable, though Nagi knew that eventually they'd have to come into contact with fire and things would get worse from there. Despite the heat, she shivered in anticipation. Tying the shirt round her mouth, she huffed in some of Tomonami's scent and briefly forgot about the world burning around them. A great plume of fire shooting up the stairs eventually brought her focus back from the brink, but now smoldering debris blocked their only route downwards. She listened to it crackle and urged herself to wake, but could not. She uttered muffled curses from beneath her mask and looked to Tomonami, stoic as ever.
"Hmph. Not getting through there. New approach required." He spoke, his deep voice dampened behind the face covering. He drew his blade and rapped it against the back wall of the staircase, weaving between spitting flames as he did so. After a few seconds of this affair, he took a step back and entered a stance Nagi did not recognise. His blade hummed with violence and the normally stoic Tomonami radiated a terrifying form of bestial energy. Nagi looked on in awe as he let out an almighty scream before piercing the wall with a straight stab from his blade. His bare muscles trembled as he twisted the sword through wood and stone, wrenching it upwards with squinting eyes, suggesting gritted teeth, and desperate moans. He paused at the apex of the slash, his arms – no, his entire body – now drenched in thick, viscous sweat. She could see the veins beneath his arms, still beset with that coursing energy, pulse with vigour and exertion. Another ferocious grunt and he brought down the blade in a frenzied slash, cutting through more of the wall with a near-comical display of brute strength. He gasped for hot, suffocating air and upon realising he would not be allowed his fill of the fresh stuff, ripped the sword from the wall with weighty, animal movements. One final leonine roar of exertion and he rushed at the wall with a tightly-balled fist, slamming into it and causing great gashes to appear around the now-expanding tear.
"Your number…" his voice sounded as if he had been possessed by Asura, and his eyes brimmed with that intense fury so unbecoming of His Wretchedness, "is up!" he slammed into the crack with a kick so forceful the wall in front of his front trembled. The area already straining under his great violence gave way, huge chunks of stone falling down the great back wall of the castle and onto the ever-bloodier battlefield below.
"How do we…?" Nagi began, but was cut short by Tomonami, who hoisted her effortlessly under one arm and leapt from the hole he had just created. Nagi was worried she'd wake up – falling in a dream was like that for her – and have this moment of self-indulgence ruined. She felt the warmth of Tomonami's chest beside her and sighed. Despite the fact she had unwillingly put her life in the hands of someone else who had just jumped out of a giant, burning wreck of a feudal Japanese castle, this was the most serene she had felt in a while. Certainly in a dream at least. Back in reality, she had grown used to the creature comfort of being around–
"Urk–!" She cried out as a jolt of inertia wracked her body. After her head stopped pounding and her body's nerves stopped tingling out of control, she felt movement as Tomonami offered her what little height he could to grab onto the ceramic lip of the wall.
"Perfectly done." He smirked as she stepped onto the hilt of the blade currently lodged into the stone of the wall, waiting for the moment that her stomach dropped as she lost her balance. A moment that, as she jumped up onto the top of the wall, thankfully never came. She looked downwards and felt slightly sick at the long drop, but noticed that there was calm at the wall's base, where a huge forest stretched out for miles ahead.
"Seems like he did as I asked." Tomonami grunted as he clawed up the wall and threw off his makeshift mask.
"Hm?" Nagi asked as he grabbed his miraculous stone-cutting blade from its resting place at the base of the wall.
"Couldn't have this escape point being sieged, so I asked someone to hold back the Albion fools from using this back wall as a siege point," He squatted down and gestured to his back, which Nagi mounted, "seems they did well." He continued as he repeatedly slammed his blade into the wall to stop their momentum as they descended. When they reached the base and touched down, Nagi noticed a figure that had been obscured by the trees shooting her an awkward thumbs-up.
"Surprised you let me take the escort from here," Lord Tosai smirked past her at the brooding Lord Tomonami, "Always took you as a gloryhog."
"You're averagely competent and I want to bash some more Albion heads in. You're only doing this at my discretion." He snarled back, causing Tosai's grin to get wider.
"I…" She cleared her throat, "I believe I am the monarch in this scenario," she chided the two, "though I side with the decision brought forth by your discretion, note that it is my discretion that is final in the future."
"Of course." Tomonami bowed.
"Yeah, well there ain't gonna be a future if we just stand around here waiting for our goose to get cooked," Tosai offered his hand. "C'mon. Leave the brute to his brutish… ness? and let's get going." Nagi took his hand before waving farewell to Tomonami, who nodded in approval before beginning to scale the wall with that sword of his. She felt an old melancholy as the treeline swallowed him from view – as if this would be the last time she dreamed of him. She watched as the green covered his form, still clambering up that wall, and continued her flight to wherever they were headed.
Nagi was not a strong runner. She just wished it wasn't so in her dreams too. Whilst she was run ragged, Lord Tosai had seemingly endless reserves of energy. At times she wondered if she was literally dragging her feet and her partner was stringing along a stiff, Nagi-shaped plank. She barely could stop for breath, being warned that it was likely that the Albion armies had found out of her flight from her smoldering royal abode by now and were likely after them on something much faster than foot. Eventually, after simply allowing the time spent running on heavy, numb legs and breathing in heaving gasps to blend as one, she nearly fell as Tosai abruptly stopped her in front of a tent. Near her, the sound of waves and serenity.
"A beach?"
"Yup! Same place we won that siege that one time!" Tosai chirped. That battle in her daydreaming mind from days ago was won? So there was lore to her dreams that even she was not privy to. Great.
"Why here?" From this vantage point, she could make out the long stretches of sand and crashing water that had washed the blood from the beach. It was now an idyll, silent little cove, sun beaming down upon the landscape. She could imagine holidaying here, if the spirits of the slain would not frown upon it.
"I'd say sentiment – and it is that, at least partially, buuut…" he made jazz hands at the tent in front of them, "your old HQ is a good place to restock and find some stuff to throw the search parties off of our trail." They trudged up to the flaps of the tent.
"...I swore allegiance to you here." Tosai stopped abruptly behind before they stepped inside. She turned to face him. "I don't think anything could cut through that now. Not after what we've seen. Hoisting the flag in remembrance of my old ruler. The way you nursed me back to health after that… episode. And now this. Travelling together to a better tomorrow. I mean…" he chuckled dryly, "At least I hope so." Gulls cawed overhead, breaking the awkward silence. Wind blew, causing the blades of grass at their feet, still rife with churned mud and dried blood, to sway towards the coast. Waves smashed against the shore, and Nagi let them, for a few moments. She nodded and smiled at Lord Tosai. That was all he would need for confirmation, seeing as the grin on his face widened at it. She opened the tent, fully intending to rest, and found her head pierced clean through by an arrow.
"...Sorry." Æthelred's voice rang out, his whitened knuckles clutching his bow for dear life as his weary figure stood in the centre of the tent, his ambush complete. Nagi's disembodied dream-self stared down at her own lifeless corpse. Tosai's ragged breath rang out from behind her and his empty eyes shook. He opened his mouth to scream, and she awoke.