Hey guys! Welcome back to Hear a Tale! It's been a little bit since the last chapter (though I did post a Super Mario RPG oneshot in the meantime, so feel free to check that out if you happen to be a fan of that game as well :) but I'm back for now! Note that updates might continue to be spotty for a bit due to the holidays/an eventual family vacation, but rest assured that I'm still actively working on this story every chance I can get. Thanks in advance for your patience :) Anyway, review time!
Thanks so much to CitrusChickadee for reviewing! As much as I genuinely like that Therion didn't actually kill Darius, nor did he witness his death, I felt he at least deserved to see what happened after the fact - to put his mind at ease so he can finally relax, if nothing else :) And yeah! He pretends not to a lot of the time, but Therion really does love his new friends :) Hope you continue to enjoy!
With that, on with the tale!
Relevant Events: Post - Ophilia and Therion's Chapter Fours, Pre - everyone else's
39. Dreams
The town of Stillsnow was a bitterly cold place, wrapped as it was in a blanket of frost and snowdrifts. Even in the day, the pale sunlight was never quite enough to warm the frozen mantle of the town - to say nothing of the frigid, ink-black nights.
The villagers, however, had adapted well to the difficulties of life in the Frostlands. Their buildings were strong, designed to carry the weight of heavy snowfall, and sizeable fires blazed continuously in every hearth. In the town's inn, especially, blankets were heaped upon every bed, maximum warmth being a top priority in order to accommodate for visitors who were unaccustomed to the cold.
Upon eight of said beds, huddled in the warmth of four different rooms while tiny flakes of snow dusted the windows outside, lay eight weary travelers. They had walked the long, freezing road from Northreach to Stillsnow, and though they had many, many more miles ahead of them to cover, they found themselves lucky enough to rest for the night in the warmth and comfort of civilization before continuing on. So much had occurred in the last few weeks that many of them had dropped off into the sleep the moment they had collapsed upon their beds, as though their exhausted bodies were fed up with all of the excitement and had demanded their well-deserved respite.
However, there is not always peace to be found within dreams.
()()()()
The cleric lay curled on her side, her face unconsciously turned towards the soft, blue light of Aelfric's Lanthorn, where it rested on her bedside table. Her arms were wrapped around herself in a tight embrace, and her brow was furrowed despite the depth of her slumber.
Stoic, distrustful faces swam through her mind as she dreamed, and outwardly, she gave a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. Though Mattias and his dangerous promises were gone, the hostility of Wispermill's townsfolk stuck with her to the point of making her squirm. The idea that a whole town of strangers could so easily and vehemently be made to hate her on sight was horrifying - to say nothing of the fact that her own sister had also fallen prey to the "Savior's" honeyed words.
The danger had passed, Lianna had returned home, and the only stop left on the cleric's long journey would be the familiar cathedral of Flamesgrace. And yet…the horrors of what could have been refused to leave her alone.
The press of cold, metal bars against her forehead.
The mad cackle of Mattias' laughter.
The gasps of his sacrificial followers as they fell, one by one.
The tears streaming from Lianna's lowered eyes.
The dark, nauseating power emanating from the darkened Flame.
He had been so close to winning. So close to engulfing Lianna, the villagers, and perhaps even all of Orsterra with the evil magic of his fallen god. He had claimed to be trying to save the world, but the cleric knew that such a thing would have never come to pass. Power such as Galdera's could never be used for anything but rampant destruction - and even if it could have saved anything, the amount of energy it would have taken to reconstruct the world to fit Mattias' ideals would have been far too much for the man to control. The dark power would have consumed him just as quickly as it did the rest of the world, and Orsterra would have been blanketed in death and blight.
In the real world, such darkness had been thwarted, at least for now. But in her dreams, the blackness clung to her as closely as her own shadow.
()()()()
In the next bed over lay the merchant, sprawled on her back with her limbs extended like a starfish. Her face was more relaxed than her roommate's, and her dreams were lighter, but a thread of anxiety had still wormed its way into her mind, forcing her to watch as her somnial images flitted through her head at double speed.
She had come a shockingly long way from her peaceful life with her parents in Rippletide. In such a short span of time, she had gone from facing no danger greater than casually bargaining with other merchants each day to nearly being killed by pirates, nearly being killed by a rich man's bodyguard, and nearly being killed by a venomous tiger - not to mention nearly being killed by many of the other deadly enemies she had helped her companions fight. It had all been quite the shock to her system, and though she was able to maintain her positivity in the daylight, she couldn't escape the stress dreams that often bombarded her at night.
Sometimes, it was only mundane worries. She would dream about missed opportunities, a swindling rival merchant, or a hole in the bottom of her coin purse. Hypothetical setbacks that she would easily brush off in the real world became fixations in the land of sleep.
What if her parents' shop fell on hard times?
What if homesickness struck her so hard that she could barely move?
What if their band of travelers got lost on an unfamiliar road?
What if they were robbed by a group of bandits?
What if she and all of her friends died at the hands of some evil warlord or nightmare creature?
Ah…so that last one may have been a bit less mundane than the rest. The more terrifying dreams were few and far between for the young merchant, but as the paths of each of her friends grew darker, the frequency of her genuine nightmares was growing to match. She did not often speak of it, but she worried about them all immensely.
Daylight still shone upon her own path. After the sun went down, however, she shared in the shadows of her friends' journeys.
()()()()
In the room across the hall, the warrior lay flat on his back, legs straight and hands neatly folded over his stomach. He would have been perfectly still, if not for the slow rise and fall of his chest and the flicker of his darting eyes behind closed lids. Most would have tossed and turned had they been subjected to the hazy, bloodstained memories that darted through his subconscious that night, but not the warrior.
He was used to it.
Those same memories had haunted him every night since the fall of the kingdom he had served, and he no longer woke in a cold sweat because of them. Too many times had he seen his comrades falling, his king collapsing in a pool of blood, and the flashing eyes of the traitorous man he could never quite sort out his feelings for. The familiar imagery hardly bothered him anymore.
If anything, since finally reconciling with Erhardt, the warrior's nightmares had actually eased somewhat. The memory of that fateful battle had not faded, and the pain was not gone, but he found that, instead of wallowing in the past, it was now easier for him to exist in the present and look towards the future. He had not yet received his full closure, but with the help of his old friend, and with his newer companions by his side, he would find it, and the restless dreams that once tormented him would diminish at last.
No more battlefields littered with familiar corpses.
No more blood spatters on violet tent flaps.
No more blades dripping with crimson.
No more cold, green eyes staring down at him.
No more guilt gnawing at his wounded heart.
The warrior had set out on his journey to reclaim his lost sense of purpose, and after all that time of drifting, untethered, through colorless days, he had found it at last. His mission was not yet complete, and yet his mind and heart felt calmer than they had in years. Finally, with friends surrounding him and a brighter future within sight on the path ahead, the warrior found himself able to stop and rest.
He would never need to suffer alone again. Not even in his own dreams.
()()()()
In the opposite bed, however, the scholar was experiencing sleep more restless than anything he'd known prior to his journey. He looked peaceful enough from the outside, sprawled as he was with his face covered by an opened, upside-down tome, but beneath the book's pages, his expression was contorted and grim.
His life had been a safe and secure one for as long as he could remember, at least before he began digging for information on From the Far Reaches of Hell. He'd had a stable upbringing, a wealth of education, and a steady teaching position - the only horrors he had ever known were tucked safely into the pages of history books. He had already been aware of how lucky he had been in life, but traveling with the others and embarking on a harrowing quest of his own had granted him a new appreciation for the privilege of ordinary days.
The scholar's mind had always been the wandering sort, and his dreams often swam with lecture topics and significant historical dates, as well as potential applications for elemental magic. To an extent, this was still the case. However, nowadays, his sleep (when he could actually slow his racing thoughts long enough to get to sleep) was more often haunted by horrific images that his prior self would never have been able to imagine.
A dead man tumbling down from the board he'd been shackled to.
A cell filled with prisoners, all pale as death and just as gaunt.
A scarlet circle painted on the ground, with crystals of blood at its center.
A pit beneath inconspicuous floorboards, where people were left to die.
A roar of anger and pain as his previous employer's body warped and twisted into a monster before his eyes.
Never before, in the first three decades of his life, had he seen nearly as much blood as he had in just the past few months. It was getting to the point where the scent seemed to stick in his nose and follow him into his dreams, the acrid tang becoming almost commonplace. It frightened him, but he had traveled along this path for far too long to turn back now.
Knowledge was no longer the only thing at stake. He would continue forward for the sake of all the people whose lives were put in danger by the dark magic, nightmares be damned.
()()()()
In the next room over, the dancer slept fitfully, one arm curled around her scarred stomach as she rode out the waves of pain that threatened to rob her of rest. The wound had initially healed quite well, but a particularly difficult battle on the way to Stillsnow had reopened it somewhat, and the long trek through frigid weather after the fact had certainly not helped. It had been retreated and rebandaged, and her life was not in danger, but the throbbing pain still managed to find its way into her already-restless dreams.
The path of revenge did not allow for particularly peaceful sleep. Before, most of her nights were filled with blurry images of ink-black feathers and blood on the floor. She would see leering faces and scalding spotlights, and the dancing scarf tied to both of her wrists sometimes looked a lot like chains. She never wavered, however, not even when the stage was flooded with tides of blood up to her knees and the head of a black bird found itself impaled on the edge of her dagger. She knew her purpose, and no amount of nonsensical nightmares would make her stray from her chosen path.
Now, however, it was mostly Simeon that haunted her sleep. Sometimes, she would see him as she'd once known him - kind and debonair, reciting poems for her and wearing a gentle smile that never failed to captivate her. Those memories, however, were often soured by her new perception of the man. Sooner or later, his familiar image would always twist into what she now knew was the painful truth.
His blue eyes glittering with malice.
His lips curved into a wide, mad grin.
His fingers pressing into her face so hard they left bruises.
His cold voice hissing into her ear.
His dagger, pushed hilt-deep into her stomach.
She felt sick every time she thought of him. Everything she'd ever suffered could be traced back to him in some way, and he'd had the audacity to feign compassion for her all the while. Perhaps he truly did love her, in some sick, obsessive way, but there was no excuse for the way he continuously took advantage of her naive feelings - and as a child, no less. It was nothing short of vile, and yet, she still refused to let it subdue her. If anything, the rage he inspired within her only helped to fuel the blazing fire in her chest.
She would let the nightmares come. With each one, she only looked more and more forward to carving a new smile into Simeon's throat.
()()()()
On the other side of the room, the huntress rested, her snow leopard companion draped over her chest, each providing the other with extra warmth. The huntress was usually a relatively light sleeper, especially when she was chasing quarry, but on this night, both she and the big cat were sound asleep. Adrenaline had carried her many miles since she had found the petrified form of her master, but now, exhaustion had finally managed to take hold.
As such, her sleep was far too deep even for dreams. She was not much of a dreamer to begin with, often not remembering much of whatever images her mind saw fit to cycle through while she slept. She had experienced the occasional nightmare as a child, as well as a few scattered, mundane scenarios that felt like real life until she opened her eyes in a daze, but generally speaking, her slumber tended towards the uneventful.
Still, before she had succumbed to the rest she sorely needed, her mind had buzzed with worry for well over an hour. Having obtained the herb that would protect her and her friends from Redeye's petrifying gaze, she was now tantalizingly close to the end of her journey - all that was left was to confront the beast itself. However, the huntress found herself unable to cease agonizing over all of the things that could potentially go wrong when the time came.
How would she track down the creature that had eluded so many others?
How would she kill it, without knowing of any specific weaknesses?
How would they distribute their precious doses of herb-of-grace during the battle?
How would they administer the potion if all of them ended up turning to stone?
How would she live with herself if any of her companions died for this cause?
None of her questions had answers at that point in time. She felt often felt restless and fidgety, knowing that she could do nothing more than she had already to prepare for the confrontation. No one had lived long enough to collect any more significant information about Redeye. She and the other travelers could not hope to predict the way the tides of battle would eventually shift and flow. They could not make any sort of tactical plan until they found the creature's lair and knew what they were dealing with. By then, of course, it might be too late - and yet they had no choice but to let the pieces fall where they may.
Anxiety was all-consuming, and yet ultimately worthless. The only thing she could do for now was to make sure she got some rest.
()()()()
In the final room, across from the previous, the thief slept on his side, sightless eye pressed into his pillow as he curled up tightly against the night's cold air. It was an unusual position for him, accustomed as he was to dozing while sitting up, the hilt of a dagger firmly in hand. Granted, said dagger still lay concealed beneath his pillow, but all things considered, he was easily the most relaxed he'd been in at least a decade - possibly in his whole life.
Part of it was unintentional, of course. Given all that he'd been through in the last few days, finally facing the past he'd left behind and renouncing the man that had betrayed him, the exhaustion that sent him into a deep, immediate sleep the moment his head had hit the pillow was unsurprising. The action had been almost thoughtless, though it instantly contradicted the years of strict paranoia he'd built up since he'd nearly been killed by a man he'd considered his friend.
He lay on his side rather than his back, no longer suspicious that someone would sneak up behind him and shove a blade between his shoulders while he slept. His curled up form was far from a battle stance, but staying alert did not seem so crucial anymore. He kept his dagger close, but not in hand, feeling no need to ward off the intruders that he had once been sure would be after him in a heartbeat if he let his guard down for even a moment. Perhaps those precautions had been useful before, but now Darius was dead and his former lackeys didn't give a damn about the thief their leader had shown such senseless vitriol for. For once in his life, he felt safe. It was fitting, perhaps, that his dreams softened to match.
Gone was the towering cliffside, brown rocks spattered with his blood.
Gone was Darius' rough laughter echoing in his ears as he fell.
Gone was the flashing pain in his left eye, rendered sightless by a traitor's blade.
Gone was the agony of injuries and the shame of stinging, welling tears.
Gone was the shadow over his heart that had held him captive for so long.
He was no longer tormented by ghosts that loomed behind him with every step, and their absence was nearly as alarming as their presence had once been. The thief had known nothing but suspicion and mistrust for many years, and it had been surprisingly difficult to readjust his habits once he'd found a group of people he could actually rely on. Even now, he still hadn't quite told them everything of his troubled past, but his resolve to do so was strengthening with each passing day. It was something his companions deserved, as well as something he himself needed to do.
His closure had been a long time coming, and was still perhaps something he hadn't quite come to terms with. At the very least, now, he could finally find peace within his sleep.
()()()()
Across the room, however, was a distinctly different image. The apothecary lay on his stomach, both arms wrapped firmly around his pillow. In truth, it was debatable whether or not he was truly asleep at all - his consciousness lingered in the strange in-between realm of persistent dreams, never really waking, but never falling into deeper sleep either.
He hadn't had the most fortunate of lives, admittedly, in the time before embarking on his journey. With a childhood plague, a father he'd never known, and a mother he'd lost only a year prior, the apothecary was not exactly renowned for his luck. Despite his circumstances, though, he had always been able to stay positive and keep the spring in his step. He refused to waste time sulking about the things he didn't have, and preferred instead to take joy in the things that he did; a roof over his head, a close friend that always had his back, and dozens of patients who were never shy about expressing their gratitude to him. Staying grounded and grateful for the boons life had granted him had helped keep him from dwelling on the less happy occurrences he'd faced.
All that, however, was before he had been forced to become a killer.
An apothecary was meant to save lives, not to take them. He'd believed in that mantra with all of his heart, right up until the moment a man he'd treated had held a knife to a child's throat. Obviously, since the whole affair had been his fault, he had been the first to step forward and volunteer to clean up the mess. In the end, the child had been saved and the villain had been vanquished, but it was difficult to view things as ending happily ever after. For now, the apothecary had doubt in his heart and blood on his hands.
Blood, dripping steadily off of the blade of his axe to dampen the ground.
Blood, bubbling from the jagged wound in the center of Miguel's chest.
Blood, dotting the child's face from where the spray had splashed him.
Blood, pooling on the forest floor, with no apothecary who would try and stop it.
Blood, which he saw behind his lids every time he closed his eyes.
The others had tried to comfort him. It wasn't his fault, they insisted. He'd done what he'd had to do. In ending one criminal's life, he'd saved that of an innocent. But did all that really matter? The incident had only happened in the first place because he had saved someone in need, only for that someone to turn out to be evil. Did that mean he should not have treated the man in the first place? Should he only attempt to save those who deserved it, like Ogen had suggested? But who was he to judge whether someone deserved to live or die? Wasn't an apothecary supposed to be perfectly neutral when it came to their patients? So then why was his heart aching so badly?
One day, he might find answers to his whirling questions further along his own path. Until then, he could only pray that those questions would someday stop following him into his dreams.
()()()()
Dreams could be a haven or a prison, a source of respite or of even greater anxiety. They could change nightly, or recur with the same visions and themes. They could be an amusing story to tell later, or a haunting that would never be spoken of aloud.
Most of all, however, dreams were fleeting. Their memory might attempt to follow the dreamer into the daylight, but they were an affliction that could be cured by distraction and company. They were not to be dwelt upon, nor did they have the power to trap the eight travelers in place in order to forcibly hold their attention.
For in the morning, without fail, they would always travel on.
Happy Holidays, and I'll see you guys next time for Tale 40: Overrated!