The world was dark. Salty beads of water struck her face in the darkness and what she had initially thought to be thunder she now realized was the crash of waves on jagged rocks in the darkness. A sudden peal of actual thunder roared through the darkness, followed quickly by a jagged finger of lightning which lit up the land around her.

She stood on a rocky promontory surrounded on three sides by roiling, crashing seas. To the southeast lay a wide, shallow bay protected by a spit of land. Waves crashed and rolled over this breakwater like a river of foamy ink. Clouds rolled and surged overhead, but the storm she stood in was a mild grumble compared to the screaming cacophony of the wall of clouds beyond the bay.

A sheer face of wind and rain ascended from rocky cliffs, towering beyond sight into the night sky. Chunks of stone could be seen in the lightning flash, ripped from the land, and flung upwards like dandelion fluff. It was as if the sky had come down to destroy the land, an apocalypse of noise and fury and violence crashing and groaning through the night.

A spike of lightning raced down the wall of wind and water, throwing the land into sharp relief. Huddled against the shores of the bay, illuminated by the crackling lightning lay the ruins of a town, its walls and towers and turrets were shattered bones reaching brokenly toward the sky like skeletal fingers. The waves crashed against the rocks behind her, causing Emma to jump in surprise. It was a dream. Of course it was. She was in Edgemoor, fast asleep in the downy arms of the wide bed she’d been given. But the dream was also so realistic as to give her pause for a long moment.

She scrambled away from the ocean along the jagged rocks as yet another wave flung itself furiously onto the rocks behind her, spraying her back with dark ocean water. She hurried forward as briny water rolled over her ankles. The wind rushed into her, pushing her forward. Between the wind and the waves she became aware she was being herded. Herded toward something. Something important she needed to see.

In the way only possible in dreams Emma quickly found herself standing among the ruins of the town’s main street. Lightning flashed nearly continuously, now, throwing the buildings and streets into sharp electric blue relief. She swept her gaze around her, taking in the destroyed buildings, buckled streets and shattered walls of the ruins she stood in.

At some point in the distant past it had most likely been a vibrant harbor town. That time had long since come and gone. The devastation was on a level she wouldn’t have even believed possible. Entire buildings had been torn asunder like one would tear apart a crust of bread. The road she stood on had once connected the harbor to the buildings on the bluffs over the town but had been shattered, chunks of stone flung into the sides of buildings and vast, gaping wounds pockmarking its surface.

Emma turned her head toward the wall of fury rising into the roiling sky to the south of the town and squinted. In the flash of lightning she could swear she saw a figure standing atop the ruins of a tower standing atop the bluffs nearly half a mile away. Obviously, she thought, it’s a dream so anything is possible. It was there she needed to go, she decided, turning on her heel and heading away from the shore.

Again, the time it took her to travel the distance to the tower was unnaturally fast and in the blink of an eye she stood at the base of a ruined tower. Stairs hung in ruins inside, spiraling along walls which were in most cases no longer there toward a roof which no longer existed. Emma peered toward the tallest floor of the tower which still was intact. A figure stood; arms upraised toward the glowering clouds.

A moment later she stood near the figure, staring at the woman before her. The woman’s long dark hair flew back in the face of the buffeting winds from the wall of wind and rain howling skyward a short distance to the south. Her humble garb and long grey cloak whipped about her slender frame as if trying to escape. Though her eyes were closed her lips moved, the words buried beneath the din of wind, rain, and surf. Suddenly the woman stopped what she was doing and turned toward Emma, eyes snapping open, their grey depths flashing angrily.

“What are you doing here?” The woman demanded, her voice barely rising above the level of the storm blowing all around them. “I told you I’m done with that shit.” Emma glanced around her, seeing no one else but the two of them.

“Because it bores me!” The woman growled in response to words Emma never said, eyes flashing. Emma noticed sparks of emerald lightning licking over the woman’s skin, crawling over her body like serpents. “Maybe you don’t get it.” The woman chuckled mirthlessly. Emma was surprised, but not overly so how clear the woman’s voice was. After all, things were easily explainable in dreams. “Actually, I know you don’t get it. Just…just leave. Fuck off back to your little tower and leave the important things to your betters.” She turned back toward the wall of wind and water before pausing abruptly and turning back sharply. “What did you say?”

The anger in the woman’s eyes was palpable enough to cause Emma to take a step back in fear. The woman’s pretty face twisted in rage, and she took another step forward, the emerald lightning surrounding her body crackling and hissing. She had no idea what the woman heard but Emma was very glad she hadn’t said it.

“You should be,” the woman growled, her hands balled into fists. The woman advanced further, causing Emma to scramble backwards even more until she was pressed against the crumbling wall of the tower, chunks of stone dislodging and falling to the ground behind her. The woman towered above her, her body shaking with barely contained fury. “Just go! I have much more important things to do than play with you.”

The woman turned on her heel and strode back toward the edge of the tower where she’d been standing at first. Emma stared around her with wary eyes. This had to be the most realistic, bizarre dream she’d ever had and, if she was honest, she was completely unnerved. A harsh smell of ozone from the crackling lightning pouring down the wall of water streaming up from the sky assaulted her nose along with the heavy scent of ocean water. Rain peppered her face, cold and stinging and the crash of waves and howl of the wall of water was so loud she could barely hear anything else except the woman’s voice which was clear and pronounced.

“Future? What future?” The woman turned back once more, a look of derision on her face. “A future where you order around your little minions, and I stand beside you like the dutiful weapon you seem to think I am? A future where you grow old and frail while I get bored and fat? No, love, I don’t want that future.”

“I don’t need it,” the woman scoffed, plainly responding to something said to her. It was beginning to get on Emma’s nerves hearing only one side of the conversation. “I want knowledge. I want power. I want to delve into the secrets beyond the Maelstrom.” She gestured toward the wall behind her. She clenched her hands and her grey eyes flashed excitedly.

“Think about it! All of the knowledge of the Phaedithians in the palm of my hands! Things not seen in ten thousand years! That is what I need! That is what I want!” The woman rolled her eyes in exasperation at whatever was said to her. “I have no need for your ephemeral pleasures. I have no need for material excess. I have no more need for this foolishness. I have a plan far grander than you could ever imagine.” The woman turned around and caught Emma’s eyes, her lips turning up in a smile.

She was immediately in front of Emma. Her breath warm on her cheek, the smell of her skin filling Emma’s nostrils. The woman’s deep grey eyes, far more dangerous than the storms raging around her stared deep into Emma’s. “This is the end, Neptis.” Her voice was suddenly guttural and harsh, none of the singsong like quality it displayed previously discernible.

“W-What?” Emma stammered, trying to step back away. There was nowhere to run, though. Her back was against the stone wall of the tower. All around her chunks of stone and bits of buildings began to float into the air as if freed from the hold of the world.

“It’s also the beginning,” the woman continued as if she either hadn’t heard Emma’s question or didn’t care to answer. Emma marveled as a turret to a nearby tower floated above the woman’s head in the background like an airship. “You are alone in the forest and the wolves are closing in from all directions. Every choice you make could be wrong. Every step you take could be fatal.”

“I don’t understand!” Emma exclaimed, irritated at these bits and pieces of a whole she couldn’t see and her own stupidity in not being able to grasp the threads.

“Things are not as they seem in Nightbrook. Look to the wild for help finding the heart in the heart, Neptis,” the woman’s voice was nearly animalistic, her face twisted in rage and pain and hate.

“What does that mean?” Emma demanded in frustration. “I don’t understand any of this!”

“What are you doing?” The woman screamed at no one, her gaze suddenly looking to the right. As expected, Emma turned to see nothing. “Wake up, Neptis. Wake up and face your destiny. Whatever that may be.” The woman’s eyes softened for a moment before turning angry once more. Suddenly a wave of black water rushed from the sea and passed over the building Emma was standing on, sweeping her away into churning darkness.