Keziah was dreaming. He knew he was. He always knew. He was always aware that his dreams were dreams, and he, just a spectator, unable to change the course, unable to speak, touch, or do. He was just experiencing, like a rich man who pays to feel what war was like. And it was always the same answer: a nightmare.
And Keziah could never stop it.
If he knew his prayers would be answered, he would still be doing it. Alas, they never were. He stopped bothering himself with it some years ago. The gods didn't deign to ease his suffering, so stopped placing his hopes on them and accepted his suffering as it was. Perhaps they enjoyed seeing a man go through pain as if it was some sort of trial. Perhaps they never heard his prayers, and he ungratefully rejected them from his life. Perhaps they didn't even exist.
Maybe his pleas were never heard because he didn't believe enough. Keziah truly hoped that this wasn't the case, as the only ones graced by the gods would be lunatics who would rather sacrifice their children than have their faith questioned.
He was dreaming. That's what he decided to focus on now. Have the nightmare play out and be done with it. He knew almost exactly what was going to happen. The same dream from his youth would occasionally reoccur to torment him. It was from the time that his childhood home burned down. Along with his family.
He was in his room again. The smell of burning wood was unmistakable in his nostrils. The smoke already started to burn his eyes. Keziah felt his younger self struggling for breath. The feeling was real, as was the dream. It was a memory, as all his dreams were. Some were wicked and twisted in their reality, some were closer to the real events. This one was really close. Close enough to make Keziah accept what had happened. But not understand. In this regard, he was still a young boy, wondering why it had happened to him.
He walked to the door, coughing the smoke out of his lungs, and tried to open them. The metal handle burned his palms, so he covered it with a blanket that lasted long enough for him to turn it before it caught on fire.
The fire was raging in the hall on the second floor of his family's estate. The roof collapsed on one end of it, leaving no escape for anyone trapped behind it. The fire seemed to rage the strongest there, as if a blazing inferno made it its new home.
Keziah acted on instinct. He had to get his younger brother to safety first. His parents were capable, so he decided to not worry about them for now. His brother's room was thankfully next to his, in the part of the hall still to be consumed by the flames. It wasn't free of them, but if one could muster enough strength of will, it was possible to move through it.
Keziah crouched under a log that fell from the ceiling. He was covering his mouth with his sleeve, trying not to breathe in too much smoke. He could barely see through his irritated eyes, but he made out a handle in the smoky darkness. It was as hot, if not more than his own. Still, he grabbed it, and with all his strength, he twisted the fire-damaged mechanism to open the door.
Through all of this, he did not hear his little brother at all, causing him to think that he was asleep. His parents' faint voices still found their way to his ears, reassuring him that they were working on getting out.
He opened the door and was immediately swept by the hot air inside. He hit his back on the fallen log and, terrified, looked inside the room. The flames there were as big as the ones at the end of the hall. They must have already made their way through the walls of the other rooms, having wood to continue in their path.
Keziah stared at the fire. He wasn't even able to make out the details inside. They were so strong. His hands were burned, his skin felt like it was burning, and all he could do was stare at the flames that now made him their new target. He didn't scream or cry. He just stared in disbelief, wondering if maybe he got there faster. His brother would still be alive.
Suddenly, the air all around him started to crackle with little blue lightning bolts, melting the air itself. Soon after, the lightning bolts started intensifying, and Keziah's whole world was covered in blue and orange infernos.
And with a deafening *crack* of the electricity splitting the air, his torture was over. He awoke in a cold sweat, ironically. Panting heavily, he tried to reconnect with reality. The lightning at the end was fiction. In reality, he shook himself from the shock and tried to make his way to his parents. He was struck by lightning some months before the fire, but if it now signalized the end of his "dreams," he would not complain about that embellishment.
Keziah collected his thoughts and steadied his breathing. With a sigh, he jumped from his berth to quickly wash away the sweat. The room was surprisingly spacious for a ship's cabin. Maybe it just felt that way to Keziah, because the three of them were the only passengers. There were six berths in total, so the group had quite a lot of room to themselves.
One advantage of this was that the keg with fresh water was just for them. Despite the abundance of water around them, fresh water was a precious commodity on a ship, thus washing oneself was done with seawater. After it was done, one would sprinkle fresh water just to wash away the skin-irritating salt. Thankfully, they had a surplus of it.
Having cleaned himself, Keziah put on his clothes and grabbed Augustus. The cranky sword didn't say much ever since Sylio, but he did offer some explanation. Apparently, there was someone in the tavern that they had stayed in that was so sensitive to Aura that Augustus feared being made a target so he stayed quiet, almost hibernating. He said that he felt his Aura probing everything in a large radius, but in a way that was almost impossible to spot. Augustus only noticed it because the mysterious Aura master had a momentary break in focus.
When Keziah asked why was he so careful. A powerful Aura meant that the man was a powerful mage. They had crossed paths with those a lot. Most of the time, it ended with both parties going their way. It's not like every mage just yearned for a battle at every opportunity. Especially when they were in a tavern, most probably resting. Mages — especially strong ones — didn't exactly stir up trouble for no reason.
Polemarchs were mostly responsible for that. They were the Tower's enforcers, or hunters. They went after any mage — especially if they received their education at the Tower — if they used their power to harm the common folk excessively. They could forgive one or two offenses, mostly due to their limited numbers, but once they decided that a mage had gone rogue, it was almost like a death sentence. Few had escaped the Polemarchs.
Augustus said that the reason why he had stayed so quiet wasn't just because he felt tremendous power from the stranger, but precisely because he didn't feel anything at all from him. The momentary mistake which allowed him to quickly realize the scale of his Aura, which was otherwise masterfully concealed, prodded him to look at the man's mana core.
Usually, no matter how incredibly strong someone is, they can't conceal their soul completely, unlike with Aura, which can be done with extraordinary skill. Mana cannot be so easily contained or masked, especially ambient mana that changes its flow when close to strong mana cores, even if they don't actively draw on it. The reason why Augustus was so spooked was because he couldn't sense anything about the stranger's soul.
The ambient mana around him looked like it almost ignored him, as if he was just a white soul — a person with no magic power at all. But that Aura was undeniable. One couldn't have such masterful control and beastly strength of Aura without having an equally powerful mana core. After all, developing Aura required having all five mana channels fully expanded, completely filling your body.
Augustus couldn't comprehend this paradox, so he stayed quiet for most of their voyage, contemplating it. Trying to figure it out.
Keziah left his favorite double-collared inside, feeling the hot sun heating the ship from clear, blue skies. He stepped onto the deck, as their cabin wasn't located below, as most of the crew's berths were, but under the quarterdeck, next to the captain's cabin.
It wasn't the biggest of ships, having only three stories — or decks — in total. One was the one under the sky, in which most of the commotion was taking place. Working, cleaning, and maintaining the sails were what Keziah could spot. He imagined there was a lot more to it, hidden details that escaped his untrained — when it came to sailing — eye. The deck below was reserved for the crew. Still, some work needed to be done there, but it mostly served as a place to relax among like-minded comrades, and, most notably, away from the captain's gaze.
Keziah could feel their loyalty and respect toward their captain, mainly because of how swiftly and without complaint the tasks were done. But even the most loyal sailors needed some time away from their boss' scrupulous eye. The deck at the very bottom was reserved for cargo, and Keziah imagined it was enormous when it wasn't filled with things like it was now.
Once on the deck, he nodded a greeting to a few of the sailors who made a connection to these past few days, which was returned. They were somewhat cold on the first day, but Keziah managed to sneak into their good graces slowly. It was always important to have good relations with people on a moving piece of wood on a sea, where the closest way of escape was hundreds of miles away. The atmosphere on the ship didn't smell like mutiny, far from it, but Keziah preferred to be insured, just in case. And the best insurance was contact and subsequent friends. Hopefully, it would be enough in case an emergency would break out, because they were quite literally closer to death than to land if that had happened, even if they sailed relatively close to the coast.
