Dreams of Reality

The Echo

 

Farros took a seat at the dining table with his father while his brother Jaret watched him from the hallway, standing by the door and holding onto the wood as if it were a raft in the middle of the ocean. There were drinks and food arrayed across the table, and cats were playing beneath it with some trinket or other. His father had lost all decorum, eating a plateful of worms with his bare hands and sending bloody juices around him with every bite, staining the majordomo’s pristine jacket all while maintaining his air of practiced disregard. Farros was ravenous as well, but the only food his plate contained was his heart. Pulsing slowly as black tendrils snaked across it at different angles. His father started to speak between two bites, and Farros saw his brother recoil in fear out of the corner of his vision. Not fear of his father, no. He was firm, but a gentle soul. Jaret was wary of the noise, its significance. The belief that the world was moving forward and he was standing in the way.

“They come to him when he slumbers,” Father said, slurping on a writhing worm. “Familiar faces and hidden shadows, born to confound. They will try to take your brother away, in time. We know, this we know.” 

At the same time, a large clock sounded the time from the other side of the room, pleading for its life. It had a family, children to feed. Its mother was sick. The playful cats quickly grew to gigantic sizes, rushing through the walls of the dining room until every last stone had crumbled and all were surrounded by the darkness of the abyss, falling in a torrent of wine and juices.

Farros looked at his hands by force of habit and saw only floating lines, a dancing blur. It took a few heartbeats for the sight to register in his mind, but the simple realisation was enough to break the daze. He was dreaming, and all the major oddities of the situation came cascading down on him, clear and simple as a child’s thought. 

His father never could stand cats.

Farros felt grateful for the years of repetitive, tedious daily conditioning he was put through as a boy, but he never had been good at controlling his dreams. Uncaring of Farros’ lucidity, the dream kept unfolding. The flood of wine underneath him parted into a river as a large field crept under his feet. His father was still here, and so was his brother, but the majordomo and cats were gone. His father was angry, shouting at the sky with his fist raised; while Jaret remained motionless, as expected. Instead of paying too much attention to them, Farros surveilled the dreamscape, summoning his training to the forefront of his mind. 

The Crimson is wild, never to be truly tamed, Farros recalled. Much like we often attract the beasts of the Halls when we infuse, our dreams betray our Chromatic potential and attract preying Dreamcatchers. We are at our most vulnerable when we dream, therefore it must be avoided at all costs. If you ever find yourself in such a place, leave a flag up and we will wake you.

Farros had not dreamt in years. Crimsonspeakers like him were presumably easy to spot in the dreaming, like blazing stars in the sky lighting the way through the night. So instead of showing Farros how to fight or navigate within the dreams, his instructor had taught him how to recognize the dreaming if he ever lost himself there, but most importantly how to avoid it altogether. He knew he had the ressources to leave a flag near his physical body, but what good would that do? He could barely remember where he was, and unanswered questions muddled his mind. What happened to him? Where was he? Were dreams truly that dangerous? He didn’t want to have to find out. He didn’t want to be here.

Me neither, the Pawn whispered impatiently in his mind. So what do we do? Where are we?

I… I Was travelling. To Oglios. Skajil accompanied me, and two others from the marshlands, Farros recalled. The chase, then the storm. Wounded horse. The cold. Then… Just a blur. 

The thoughts came to him unbidden, and the landscape shifted to match them. The bright colors of the fields turned ashen and muddy, morphing into an icy field complete with its frozen lake. Dark horses struggled on the perilously brittle ice, and more than a few disappeared in the watery depths.

“Shit, no!” Farros shouted as the landscape shifted further away from his grasp. “Stop changing!”

He couldn’t control this. He was not ready, he hadn’t been trained enough. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself with his go-to mental exercise. In his mind, he built the image of a black expanse pulling everything around itself to its center, absorbing the entire world until nothing but pure blackness was left, a place of safety and contemplation. A refuge where time was absent, and mortality a mere afterthought. He felt calmer after a while, and realized how ragged his breathing had been. His body was panicking but his head had kept its cool; and Farros knew with clear certainty that Professor Iliki would be proud. 

He could do this?

He could do this.

 But when Farros opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the ground and entirely tied with rope, held captive. Panic rising in his chest, he tried hopping around and then rolling on his sides, but to no avail. He could hear himself panting, like this was happening to somebody else, someone in another dimension. An odd gurgling noise escaped his mouth, followed by weak whimpers. This wasn’t happening to him, the rope wasn’t real, no one was keeping him prisoner, he was going to wake up where he had been.

Dying in the snow, the Pawn said, we’ve been slowly dying in the snow!

A joyous mix of panic and delirium threatened to overwhelm him right then, but he heard the shuffling of footsteps on wet ground behind him, and the part of him that was losing it retreated in favor of the frightened, desperate part of him that just wanted it all to be alright. 

“Please, help me! Help me, I’m trapped here!” Farros pleaded as he prayed inwardly.

Please just be a dream. Be a test. Be anything else...

The footsteps approached slowly until they were right next to his head. He could see, albeit upside down, the visage of his rescuer. A monstrosity with nothing but teeth populating the porous, purple skin of its oval head. It approached its head closer to his and whispered something in his brother’s voice as hot drool fell from its tongue and onto Farros’ cheeks.

“Do you have to go because of my weakness? Was it my fault?” Jaret’s voice said.

The monster somehow opened its face wider than it already had been, readying itself for a most scrumptious meal. Farros felt its breath, sweet with the promise of deliverance from fear and pain. 

He closed his eyes so hard it hurt, and everything changed.

A jumble of sensations assaulted him, but three were more prominent than the others. The first was cold because of course it was. It seeped into his bones, reminding him he didn’t belong there. The second was this familiar yet always strange sensation of falling despite laying down. He firmly felt the ground on his back yet he lurched forward, disorientated, trying to grab hold of something, anything. The third was something rough on his face grating against his frost-numbed flesh and keeping his mouth closed. He opened his eyes as he lurched up, recognizing Slaapir’s eyes caged between a beige scarf and a fur hat, intense blue with scattered white dots, fixed on him. He was keeping Farros down, overpowering him. Still panicked, Farros lashed out, kicking around with any available limbs. Galena came from the side and held his feet together tight. He was outnumbered and either of them would be more than a match for him on a physical level. Still, he struggled. They were allies, he knew that; yet allies did not restrain each other. His exhausted and frightened mind could not reason much further than that.

It took but a few seconds for Farros to stop wriggling and start catching his breath instead, which proved difficult with Slaapir’s hand forcefully applied against his mouth. The marshlander was strong, and clearly knew how to immobilise someone efficiently.

I counted eleven seconds, the Pawn noted from a warm recess of Farros’ mind, that’s how long we fought back. Disgraceful.

Slaapir released some of the pressure on Farros’ chest and made signs with his hand in a slow and deliberate way, one after the other rather than the flurry of hand movements he was accustomed to conveying. Farros did not understand the signs fully but could decipher some of it.

A finger across the lips, Silence. Flat hand pointed towards himself threateningly, Danger. Hand open next to his ear then retracted away and closed, Outside. 

For a few seconds, Farros could only hear his own cadenced breath as everything else was still. Slaapir signed for Silence again and carefully removed his other hand from Farros’ mouth. Galena was still holding his legs together and watched him intently, but released her grasp after Farros had kept sufficiently silent. With a sudden drowsiness, Farros got up, supporting himself on his elbows as the two marshlanders were crouching. 

All three of them were in a cabin, wooden floorboards, stone walls, and rustic furniture, the perfect home away from home. It probably had been envisioned as sturdy and cozy, but that time had long since passed. The building itself had suffered greatly against the elements as the dislodged stones that used to be part of the walls could attest to.

Don’t get your colors mixed, Farros thought while shaking his head briskly, hoping it would reset his train of thought. Instead, both his head and neck pulsed with indignant pain, jolting him a step further towards wakefulness, and a few steps more towards total mind collapse.

Situate yourself, the Pawn recited quietly, happy to provide guidelines. Check for injuries first, and check your reserves after that. Then figure out what sort of uncolored sky you’re under before it falls on your head.

The Pawn was the part of his self who had no further ambition than being given orders and completing them to the letter. The Pawn enjoyed being directed, and always derived adequate pleasure from a job well done. The Pawn had no qualms, no hesitation, no remorse. He was a creature of habits, forged in the fires of perfect routine. The Pawn was fond of threats and actions carried out, so long as he did not have to decide what those would have to be. Less effective in the absence of someone to give him a direct order, he still knew what had to be done because he had been told many times before, and it always started the same way when he woke up in an unfamiliar location: situate yourself. 

Farros checked his body for wounds, starting with his head and moving down. He seemed in good condition apart from his chest where he likely bruised a rib or two. It was too cold to remove his coat and check his skin, but the pain was evidence enough. He also had an angry bump on the side of his head, but his vision was not blurry like it had been right after hitting that tree face first. Then he checked his pockets for his reserves of color, his source of power. He was what some people called a Crimsonspeaker. The title still sounded a bit ridiculous to him, but Infusers did like cultivating a certain air of mysticism and mystery about themselves, and it did help sometimes. While other times they were called out as sorcerers and witches, accused of bringing evil down on the good, upstanding people of the world. If only the world was so pure as to be distilled down to black and white… Or so Professor Iliki used to say.

Crimsonspeakers could tap red, stealing the color’s energy and leaving white in its stead. Once tapped, the energy could be held for a short time, then expanded to produce an infusion, a measurable effect. As far as Infusers went, red ones were rarely met with good will. Some even called the practice underhanded, lacking honor. So people like Farros had to be kept on a tight leash for the common good. That was what passed for honorable in Gonphar.

 The Pawn’s opinion was deeply pragmatic; he would make use of the tools available to him, devious or no. Farros had no thought on the matter. The color was essential to his very existence; it was part of him just like the blood running in his veins. Everything was a reason to apply his infusing skills. It was as vital to him as flying was to a bird, or swimming to a fish, or metabolizing to basically any living thing. Infusing was the one thing he could not let go, the pillar which his mind had always been built around. It defined him, outlined his individuality, and framed his potential. Yet the constant reminder of his nature as an infuser was a saw grinding at his bones, threatening to cut him in half right down the middle.

We’re losing it, the Pawn said coldly. Concussed? Are we concussed? 

Slaapir and Galena had moved further away from him, signing to each other as Farros was still checking on his color reserves. His movements were sluggishly slow, and trying to speed up only made him nauseous. He had two smokes hiding in a little square box in his coat and a box of matches in his trousers to go with them. That was all. He had used the last of his liquid red in the storm, though—

A raspy scream echoed through the cabin from outside, something between laughter and frustration. Farros startled forward, his ribs flaring with pain, as he recognized the sound the dream-creature had made before it had talked to him. He seethed, holding his chest, but kept quiet. Both Galena and Slaapir stood very still; she was already gripping a pistol in a two-handed grip as Slaapir drew a long hunting knife. Both were turned to the door, and all three were holding their breath. A detail Farros had somehow missed jumped at the forefront of his mind: where was Skajil? No answer had had time to form when the entrance door slammed open. The wooden frame creaked madly as it was torn off of one of its hinges, revealing the dream-monster in all its grotesque glory. Farros laughed nervously, not because he was about to die, but because the creature somehow reminded him of Pharkes, a war-priest of Kalveis his father had known back in Goldranas. Same bulbous features, same gait, same improbable width. Even Pharkes’ family probably didn’t think he was human either. In the background, it sounded like the Pawn was saying something. Didn’t matter.

Barely needing a moment to evaluate the situation, the creature dashed forward without a sound. Its tattered brown cloak billowed as it crossed the gap in an eyeblink, swiping at Slaapir with heavily-clawed hands. They exchanged blows, though it looked to Farros like Slaapir was being pushed around. The man was deft at wielding a blade, but the creature was both larger and faster than him, and it would get him eventually. Still, he held his own for a time. 

You gotta do something. You gotta do something, but all you’ve got is two smokes. 

Farros pushed his back to the wall and used it as support to get up. He had expected pain from his rib cage but they barely complained as he righted himself and took stock of the situation. Galena shot at the creature several times, though instead of the monstrous grunt Farros was expecting, a high-pitched and ear-piercing wail exited the toothy maw in the unmistakable impression of a frightened infant. It then shifted to a man’s voice, shocked, but with a hint of amusement layered in.

“Ya shot me! Ya shot me, and for what?!” it said before lumbering towards Galena. She was pinned to a corner of the room, looking around frantically for something to put between her and the wailing.

Slaapir used the moment’s diversion to stab the creature in its side. The first two were clean hits, but on the third stab, the blade stayed stuck inside the creature. Slaapir pulled on the blade instinctively, trying to retrieve it, but the creature backhanded him hard and sent him flying against the already crumbling stone wall. The stones barely resisted, giving way and falling outward as Slaapir was ejected outside. As the wall collapsed, the wooden beam holding the roof creaked and bent, a prelude to the total collapse of the rustic cabin. 

The Pawn took over, leaving Farros in his daze. He unlatched the nearby window and pushed it open. The afternoon sun blazed right into Farros’ retinas as he tried to lift himself over the windowsill. He pushed his stomach on it and rolled over, sliding outside as the cabin’s roof came apart fully and collapsed behind him. His fall was thankfully cushioned by deep snow, but the hard part was getting up once again. He struggled to find a foothold in the snow and started waddling towards the only sound that mattered.

Galena was shouting. Not words, but exertion; not that he could understand her anyways. She was fighting, struggling for her life, but the dream creature was silent, though both it and Galena were making the snow crunch under their rapid steps. But these sounds did not matter. Instead, Farros moved closer to a wet whine many paces away. Rounding the corner of the cabin, he located its origin: Slaapir’s broken body. The sounds of struggle faded from Farros’ mind as he closed the gap and kneeled in front of the marshlander, careful to not step in the pooling blood. Slaapir’s chest had been dislodged and two ribs were poking out of his fur coat. His neck was stuck at an odd angle, and Farros recognized the faint smell of feces rising in the cold air. He tried to focus on the blood, but nausea built in him suddenly, forcing him to turn. He choked silently for some time but managed to keep it all in. Most of it.

Slaapir was still whining as his blood pooled on the snow. He spoke a few slurred words, but Farros could not understand their meaning. 

There’s some blood, he’s bleeding out slow, Farros noted more calmly than he thought possible.. But too slow, too slow...

Infusing was very much a science though few truly understood it. Farros only had what experts would call a “working knowledge”. The effect of any given Infusion depended on two major factors: firstly, the color being used and secondly, the state of the object the color was retrieved from. Which was to say retrieving red from a chair which was solid, or red from wine which was liquid, yielded two very different properties. And in the case Farros found himself in, only liquid red would be of any use to him. At least he hoped it would.

So he tapped on Slaapir’s blood pooling in the snow and dribbling down his clothes, turning the dotted red stains into a pure white indistinguishable from the cold surface. The color unlocked something within him, a sixth sense growing rapidly in his consciousness, its use as elementary as breathing. 

It’s not enough, the Pawn indicated. It’s not going to be enough.

It was true of course, the Pawn knew his business.

Still kneeling, Farros turned away from Slaapir’s collapsed body and scanned the area while holding his pained chest with both hands. He found Galena in the distance, her figure crawling in the snow, attempting to put distance between herself and the creature. It was inhumanly quick, barely hindered by the piled snow under its feet. It caught Galena by the leg and turned her over effortlessly, pulling her up by the head until she was almost kneeling on the ground. She went still for a moment then flailed and screamed, her voice echoing deep through the empty snowfield. The shrill that came out of her mouth sang of horrors past, the dug-up anguish of nightmares best forgotten, of the monsters under the bed made into flesh just to torment her. 

It’s not enough, the Pawn indicated again. He would be shaking his head if he had one.

There is more than enough, said another voice. The Watchman. We simply need to reach for it.

Slaapir’s chest was going up and down in a shallow effort for survival. His eyes were unfocused, his speech down to a murmur.

Put him out of his misery and save a life, the Watchman advised.

It’s not enough, the Pawn repeated again, stuck in a mad loop.

Slaapir’s hunting knife had been lying in the snow a few paces away. Farros had meant to say something before slicing Slaapir’s throat, but too many words were already fighting in his head, and he had been scared to botch the cut. Slaapir expired rapidly, and precious blood seeped out of him. 

It’s enough, the Pawn said triumphantly.

The Watchman was dead silent.

Farros gathered his mind as best he could and stepped into the Halls. The cold of the field retreated, and familiar colored cobblestone extended in all directions around him. There was no time to be discreet in hopes that the Halls’ denizens would miss his presence, he would just have to make it quick. The creature was fully formed in the Halls, while Galena only appeared as a white statue of herself, openly weeping. Farros coiled around the dreamcreature’s own psyche in search of something to break, no point being subtle. He had expected the creature to react, but it remained firmly focused on Galena instead, giving Farros a perfect opening to find a breach. Fueled as he was with liquid red, Farros could influence the emotions of living creatures. The infusion had its limits of course, it certainly was no mind-control as what many believed it to be, but it was reliable. Or had been, until now.

The dreamcreature’s thoughts were easy to guide one way or the other, but there were layers upon layers of them, folded onto each other like flaps of skin on an obese torso. There were too many thoughts, too many emotions to keep track of, and pushing on any single one had no effect that Farros could sense, even the ones that always returned a response like fear or anger.. He could also feel Galena’s emotions being pulled from her and towards the creature who was devoting its focus to this one fresh strand of twisted memories. Was this thing collecting? Feeding from people’s thoughts? Were these layers of emotions the remains of the ones it had devoured? Farros had thought himself proficient, but he could not influence this creature just as he could not carry a mountain on his back.

The tools to complete the work are here, the Watchman chimed in. The enemy of my enemy...

The Halls did not suffer visitors for very long, and the creature surely must be as out of place as Farros was. He needed to use that, to set a trap. With any luck, the Halls’ guardians would kill the creature as it appeared to be a larger threat. Not wasting anymore time contemplating the flimsiness of his made-up plan, Farros used the remainder of his red pushing on the creature’s amalgamated pleasure, hoping to distract it while flaring as bright as possible. The guardians should be there any seco-

It occurred to Farros in that instant when he turned his gaze that he had never been in the Halls for this long before having to pull out. Somehow, the guardians always could find Crimsonspeakers in about a minute on average, no matter the time of day, and he had been there for... Much more than that. Dread mounted as the obvious conclusion dawned on him: they were already there. Why not attack directly then? 

Questions numbed his mind as he instinctively attempted to pull himself out, though at least it did not come as a surprise when a multicolored shadow crept up on him in the stale air of the Halls, flashed what looked like a wide grin, and cut his right arm clean off.