Nightmare
Matthias greets unconsciousness like an old friend, relieved to escape the cold and the constant shivering of reality. He searches for the summer field his mind wandered to when they were crossing the plains and finds it bathing in sunlight again. The air is crisp and fresh, and there are birds chirping merrily from the trees. He is wearing loose pants, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up as he would have worn mid summer at home, and he enjoys the warm breeze and sunlight on his skin.
He wanders around for a few moments and finds Lukas lazing in the grass right in the center of the field. He is wearing a light blue short-sleeved tunic, simple pants as if he were a commoner and his shoes are nowhere to be seen. He looks completely at ease where he lies. He blinks up at Matthias once he approaches but does not move otherwise. "I see you are not dying this time," he comments lightly. "That is certainly an improvement."
Matthias settles down next to him on the grass, toes of his own shoes and socks to let the grass tickle against his feet. As this is all a dream and he can do what he wants, he carefully strokes fingers along the bare skin along Lukas's arm and Lukas lets him without a single protest. The skin is cold underneath his fingers and breaks out in goosebumps. "Since I'm not dying this time," Matthias says carefully. "Does that mean we can just stay here this time? Enjoy the sun for a bit?" He traces the veins of Lukas's lower arm and admires the lack of blue markings and scars before he entwines their fingers together.
"You know you can't hide in dreams forever? You have to face reality eventually." Lukas smiles gently and the sight is painfully beautiful. "Besides, is it not cruel doing that to yourself? To bury yourself in a dream of something you can never have?"
"What are you talking about?" Matthias asks. He already suspects where the conversation is heading but desperately wants to play ignorant for a while longer and wishes Lukas could just play along for once, especially as he is a figments of Mathias' own imagination. His heart begins racing in his chest, painful and hard and he closes his eyes because he cannot stand to look at Lukas in that moment. Tears threaten to spill down his cheeks and he just wishes Lukas would stay silent. "Please, just don't say anything else. Let me just enjoy this. At least for a little while."
Lukas ignores his pleading. "You know that even if you win the war, we can never be together. Never find out what could grow between us. You have just made up this whole fantasy I'm not closed up and open to the idea, but most likely I will die before this war ends. If fate is unkind enough, you might even have to be the one that kill me in the end."
Matthias' eyes snap open, "Don't you say things like that." He moves in to shake Lukas hard and make him shut up, but instead freezes in his tracks. At the center of Lukas' pale blue tunic, a dark stain appears out of nowhere and rapidly spreads to cover the entirety of his chest. Matthias franticly touches it, and his hand comes back almost dripping in red. "No," he breathes heavily. "Don't do this to me."
Lukas sits up in the grass, unfazed by the spreading blood. His eyes clouds over as if he is dead and his skin turns a shade of ghastly pale grey, with the blue markings sneaking down his arms and glowing brightly. "What other choice is there?" He asks coldly. The sudden change in demeanor makes Matthias' blood feel like ice flows in his veins.
Lukas smirks viciously, showing off bloodied teeth and grasps Matthias's arm hard to prevent him from pulling away. "If you do not kill me, who will? Who can? You are the only one even aware of my weaknesses and you have seen how easy it is for me to slaughter a field of men without much effort. There is nobody else to stop me and I will murder every single person you care about unless you stop me."
Gradually, the field changes around them. The trees disappear and the ground underneath them turn bare and frozen, and Matthias realizes they are sitting in the middle of a bloodied battlefield. Strewn around them is rubble, dead horses and worse of all, corpses as far as the eye can see. Snow is drifting lazily from the sky now, and the temperature plummets in an instant. Matthias shivers and his teeth clatter as his breath leaves his mouth in a white plume.
When Lukas lets go of his arm, he collapses on the ground, trembling and shaken to his core.
When he looks back up again, Lukas is standing before him, clad in the embroidered tunic and fine leathers of the commander's uniform. The blood on his chest is gone, the blue markings are glowing through the fabric of his tunic and his eyes look sharp and dangerous. "Look around you," Lukas snarls. "See how they all suffered. You think you feel cold now, in the trap of your own mind. Think of how cold you will feel when it is all real and you stand alone, surrounded by your fallen friends when you made the choice not to kill one of the people who caused it all." Lukas yanks him up to his feet and hauls him towards one of the corpses lying face down in the snow. "Look at them!"
Matthias feels tears streak down his cheeks, and they freeze in place on his face. His fingers are numb and shaky when he reaches out towards the body, despite knowing he does not want to see. He turns it overs and is face to face with the familiar face of Torleif. A sword pierces the body, and his face is speckled with blood.
"He fought so hard," Lukas says nonchalantly behind him. "However betrayal can easily break even the strongest of men. He should never have put his trust in you when you betray him repeatedly by consorting with the enemy. You make him weak. He cares for you like a son and trust you with his life. This is what his trust will lead to."
Guilt washes over Matthias and he tears his gaze away, only to notice plenty of other familiar faces around him. Vilje lies on her back; throat slashed open and fogged-over eyes turned to the skies. The grim face of Gorm looks frozen in a scream and his frozen fingers clutches around the hilt of an axe. Trym is next to him, partially lying underneath a dead horse, reaching for a bow just out of his grasp. A trail of bandages and herbs leads to the healer Eir.
"Please let me go," Matthias pleads. "I want to wake up."
"Would that really be better?" Lukas kneels next to him and whispers sweetly in his ears, lips teasing at Matthias' earlobe in mock affection and voice so sweet it is nauseating. "Outside of this dream, your body is still struggling to get warm after almost freezing to death. You'll be shivering and freezing, and the pain will be unimaginable. It will feel like you are slowly losing one limb after another, just like you'll lose your friends. When you wake up and see them you will remember this dream and how you saw them laying dead at your feet and know that your actions will lead to their certain doom."
"You're lying," Matthias yells. "I might still be cold out there and freezing to death, but my friends are out there fighting to keep me alive and get me warm. I know I am lying to them about where I get my information, but I am not betraying them." Matthias gets up and turns away. He starts running, but trips over another body and face plants in the snow. He instinctively turns back to see what he tripped over and meets the dead eyes of Berwald aimed right at him. Several arrows stick out of his back, and it looks like he fell over while running away from something.
Matthias gasps in horror. "You are not real, this is not real," Matthias shakes his head as if that will clear the sight from his mind. "You are just a figment of my mind preying on my fears. This is a nightmare. You can't hurt me. This is not real!"
"Are you sure?" Lukas questions. "For someone who claims to be innocent, you sure carry a lot of guilt. He is suspicious of you, you know," Lukas gestures to Berwald. "He knows you are hiding something, but for some reason he is choosing not to confront you about it. Probably because he sees you as a friend, bad mistake on his part. With all the lying you do to your supposed friends; do you really deserve their help?"
Berwalds body is partially laying across a smaller one, protective even in death. Matthias averts his gaze, but Lukas steps up and rolls away the smith's body with his foot to reveal Tino. He then kneels and forces Matthias head back with cold fingers on his jaw, so he has to look. "He is not that much younger than you, but he is still so young of mind, hopeful and trusting. Shame really to lose someone so bright and full of life. Berwald is going to be heartbroken when he dies; you have seen how protective he is. He will blame you for his loss."
"That's enough!" Matthias explodes in motion to knock Lukas over and get him away from his friends. "Your words are poisonous, and I don't have to listen to them. I am doing everything I can to keep my friends alive and they know it. That's why they fright to keep me alive, that's why they trust me. I deserve to get warm again and I will lead my friends to victory. I also know another thing," Matthias breathes harshly. "You are actually not this coldhearted. I saw you cry, and I know you care."
The landscape around them changes again. The frozen battlefield is gone, and Matthias find himself standing atop a large stone wall surrounding what he imagines a castle might look like and staring down upon a vast city stretching out below him.
There is some fight left in you after all," Lukas says gently. His entire disposition changes and he looks smaller and meeker than before. The evil smirk and glint in his eyes are gone and his gaze lowers to the ground. "So, you will march on the capital and do what exactly? The city does not only consist of soldiers you know. The citizens are innocent in this whole ordeal, and any plan of sabotage will affect them as well. If you destroy the food supply, the king will order his soldiers take food from the citizens to make sure his armies remain fed instead of them. You will cause thousands of innocent people to suffer the same pain the soldiers caused your people."
Images flash before Matthias' eyes of people lying in the streets crying for food. Their skin is drawn tight around their bones, their cheeks are hollowed and their eyes sunken. The children are the worst, their cries never quieting no matter what their parents do to comfort them. People are rummaging through garbage in desperate search of something to eat and fighting for the few pieces they come across even though they are small, rotten and covered in filth.
"It is not a kind fate," Lukas continues. "You do not want to force this suffering on anybody else. Then there is your other plan. You want to sabotage for the soldiers from within the city so that they cannot fight. Ruin their weapons, destroy their armor. Make the soldiers weaker so that the rest of your people can launch a full force assault on the city and face less resistance. It will still cause many innocent deaths. The streets will become a battlefield, and the innocents have no chance of getting away."
Below them, there is a loud crash and a roar of thousands of voices as a horde of rebels rush through the streets below them. There is a flash, screaming and suddenly buildings are ablaze, sending plumes of smoke towards the skies.
Lukas steps towards the edge of the wall and looks mournfully down at the rapidly developing battlefield below them. "First you will have to make your way through the civilians. They will not put up much resistance, but it will be horribly bloody as they attempt to make their way out of danger."
Below them, the fire spreads rapidly as masses of rebels sweep through the streets and make their way closer to the wall Matthias and Lukas are standing on. There is another loud roar, and another horde sweeps out through the city from another direction. This time it is the soldiers, and they clash together with the rebels, leaving the streets drenched in blood.
Matthias shudders at the massacre.
Lukas looks up on him and smiley tamely before he looks down again. "When you have made it through the civilians, there are the soldiers. That will be much harder. The capitol and the city are their home territory, and they will be fighting tooth and nail to defend it. Then, if you manage to defeat them and make it all the way to the castle, you will have to face me. The last obstacle before the King." Lukas slowly unsheathes his twin blades from their sheaths and raises them slowly, waiting for Matthias to move. "To claim your victory, you will have to kill me."
Matthias realizes his own previous simple clothes have changed into heavy leathers and a few pieces of plate mail over the shoulders and chest. Armed and ready for battle. In his hands, he holds his great battle-axe, the metal gleaming in the sharp winter sunlight.
Lukas rushes forth, lashing out with his swords, but Matthias blocks them easily before he backs a few steps away to get some distance. Lukas sighs and attacks again, this time managing to cut a line open in the boiled leather protecting Matthias stomach when he is a little late in raising his axe.
"You are supposed to fight me," Lukas cries as he raises his blades again.
"I can't!" Matthias yells back. He holds the axe up defensively when Lukas recklessly swings again but refuses to take advantage of the opening the attack leaves in Lukas' defenses.
"Just one simple swing; and you can have your victory. I will not even fight back if you do it" Lukas holds out his arms, swords held limply in his hands leaving himself open for attack. The flames from the battle below them climb up the wall they are standing on, making the temperature increase rapidly.
Matthias stares down at the weapon in his hands and swallows heavily with sweat gathering on his brow.
"Why do you refuse to kill me?" Lukas asks a note of frustration in his voice. "You have had several chances already." Memories flicker by around them. Matthias sees himself begging Torleif and Brynjar to take the commander alive instead of executing him on the spot. He sees Lukas chained and beaten in the tent after battle, he could have killed him then when he was weak, and nobody would have blamed him for it. They might even have cheered. Then Matthias sees the night before he entered the plains. His rage was burning hot in frustration, but still he never even raised his weapon.
"I don't know!" Matthias yells desperately. "I just can't"
"You know perfectly well why you cannot," Lukas states firmly, he drops the swords, and they clang sadly against the stone. He steps up to Matthias and his voice is barely louder than a whisper. "You just refuse to admit it to yourself. Now is your chance, just say it."
When Matthias looks aside in shame, he pushes Matthias' chest hard and Matthias' gaze snaps back up. "The only one here is you. Just say it!" Lukas screams and clings to the leather chest piece Matthias is wearing.
"Because I am falling in love with you." Matthias screams back and freezes. He gasps for breath once the words are out and feels sick to his stomach. It was a feeling he never even dared to consider. He could admit to the curiosity and the strange attraction between them, but not affection. Not until now, in the deepest torments of his mind.
Lukas smiles then sadly and looks as defeated as Matthias feels. "No matter how this war ends, you will end up the loser."
A dark figure steps up behind Lukas, out from the flames that now surround them. Shadow shrouds the newcomers face and Matthias cannot make out any features, but a golden crown rest on the person's head. The figure slowly raises a sword above his head. Matthias is about to yell out a warning, but the figure strikes fast, thrusting the sword forwards, striking Lukas in the back. It goes all the way through Lukas' chest and the tip just gently touches the leather of Matthias' armor in a silent mockery.
Everything freezes again and Matthias' heart races as he has time to take in every single detail before him. How Lukas' eyes look at him, large and mournfully and his mouth hangs open in a silent gasp.
The figure pulls back the swords and dissipates in a cloud of smoke.
Lukas' eyes close and he crumples.
Matthias reach out to catch him as he falls, and he gathers Lukas in his arms. He knows it is useless as Lukas' head lolls lifelessly against his chest. "No, no, no" Matthias chants and pats desperately at the wound to staunch the bleeding, but to no avail.
The flames close in around them. The air is tight and the heat unbearable. Flames licks at his skin, Lukas lays dead in his arms. His hands are drenched in blood. He collapses on the ground, tearing at his hair and screams.