With creeping suspicion starting to swell over me, I eventually convince myself to sleep that night.
I'm staring out at the ocean from a great distance, standing on crushed leaves and dead grass, this cape overlooking this dream bay. It's dusk, a wind blowing in from the west.
This isn't my dream.
None of this is really mine.
Seemingly, the world begins to spin. The ground shakes and rumbles threateningly as the core of this dream-earth begins to rotate on its axis. Involuntarily, I think off a glass jug being uncorked, rapidly freeing the content within.
These tiles, these grassy, dead, unnatural floors beneath me begin to crack. They shudder and moan, spasming out.
I stare out at the ocean, unmoving. Despite what's happening on land, the sea is still, quiet. Almost serene.
•FAU
V##
\\ISM_
I watch something- no, someone, emerge from the water. It's an avian creature, some kind of owl with snow-white, blank feathers as long as the trees that stalk over Mossflower. The massive bird with pooled black eyes soars out with no waves or ripple, simply exits. It rises, higher and higher.
It opens its beak, a massive, gaping maw, revealing nothing- antimatter, infinity, pure darkness. It could swallow me whole and I could see anything and nothing, like the sky on the blackest night.
A booming, thundering voice, not so much coming from the owl as assaulting me from every angle, amplified by the void.
"You should not have come here."
The ground beneath me is all but gone. I stumble back, crashing onto the last stone plateau that hasn't crumbled.
Staring up at the colossus bird, hundreds of thousands of thought race through my mind, but I can only muster up the courage to meekly gasp:
"Why?"
"You and your group have tried to overthrow my kingdom," I hear. My ears are splitting, but I can't cover them, as I'm grabbing onto anything to keep from careening into the void below. "I cannot stand idly by as my domain is threatened."
"We have every right to be here," I grunt. "You look at us and see nothing worth liking, so you bar us, discriminate against us, and kill us, even when we've done no wrong,"
"It is true I see nothing in you, but whereas you and your peers perceive at face value, I look into the soul."
"Look in my soul, then," I challenge.
"Regret, fear, loneliness, apathy, pride;" the voice barks. "Everything wrong with beasts- you, fox, are no different."
The plateau beneath me is beginning to shake. I don't have long, and as I look upwards I can see bright streaks of light falling from the sky.
"Who are you to judge? What makes you perfect and immune to the vices you claim I have?" I shout. "You are not better than me, be damned!"
"Landeskog," the voice says- now feminine, now something familiar. Not Anizev, not the squirrel Maria, it's...
Mother?
"Landeskog," I hear her repeat, again. Everything is going silent- ground still rumbling, yet the event makes no noise. I feel... At peace.
'MARASM
"I'm not your mother," the voice snaps, back to its original furor.
"Look into my eyes," it says. "Do you not believe I know suffering?"
שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה
there was no war it was him him him him him IT. IT! it came from between the folds of time and space and worlds and light and dark something that is but should not be IT IS STILL HERE
אחדistandatthegate
to
be
Think for me, Landeskog. Think of a beast.
He doesn't remember from his childhood on the North Shore other than when it ended. He never knew his mother, and his father left to the seas not long after- leaving him with his grandmother and the sword.
That sword would nearly be the death of him, but eventually ensured his eternal life.
Horrible beasts arrived upon the shore, ripping him from the grasp of home. His grandmother Wildred died during the journey to Fort Marshank, leaving him orphaned. Under the rule of the stoat tyrant Badrang, he had toiled as a slave for years, exacting his revenge- sword through the heart. The only girl he'd love died in the final siege; as a result he went far away to distance himself from the Eastern coast and what transpired there.
Soon enough he reached a place called Mossflower, a land in a state of unrest. Verdauga, the thousand-eyes wildcat king's long reign neared an end- his own daughter poisoned him, ascending the throne at his death. Tsarmina did what many others simply did not think of- the sword of Martin the Elder was broken in two.
It was reconstructed by a badger warlord, blade forged from meteorite. It was here when it first began to speak to him, much more than anything else. Everything else was simply unimportant. He never wed and had no children.
Landeskog, I assume you know who I am referring to, and who exactly I am.
Martin the younger warrior son of Luke. I cannot die.
I was buried beneath the abbey I helped build. But as you are quite aware, my spirit lives on. It has to. This land will not fall to the things I've fought and witnessed.
This is mine.
The owl burns like a Phoenix in flight, flames licking at its wings like hungry pups. With in moments it is completely engulfed in fire, I can briefly make out the outlines of a mouse, and then it is all gone.
The plateau falls apart and I am sent tumbling into the void, down down down into the dark dark dark cold dark cold dark endless and I just want to
Wake up.
A voice above me asks, "What're you panting and sweating for?"
"Mmmmar," I groan. I open my eyes and immediately regret doing so in the sheer brightness of the morning sunlight. Anizev's silhouette is visible in front of the burning sun.
"You look like you've just ran across the ocean from here to Salamandastron," she crosses her arms. "Screamed all night, too. Bad time to go kooky on us, Landeskog, it's the morning of the day we march on Redwall."
I look at her and smile, relaxing against the heat. They have no idea.
I am afraid.