There is fire, nothing but fire and smoke. Screams fill the air around me, along with the black musk that chokes my lungs. I don’t know where I am. I have never been here before in my life. It’s a dark, stone, cold castle. The screaming comes to an abrupt stop and I realize it was just one person screaming. I take one step down the dark corridor which is lined with tapestries.
The first one shows Moogar giving pointing at a child and a heavenly light is over the babes head. As it goes down, the scene changes to the child growing up in a small city. The boy has red curly hair and brown eyes and he is playing with a wooden sword against a friend. Later the tapestries show a grey skinned woman with deep ebony hair and bright yellow eyes. She wears a long deep purple dress which is frayed at the bottom and sprouting from her back are a pair of purple skinned wings. She is in the air above a man who is looking up at her. The man has red eyes and black hair with a scar on his chin and cheek.
My chest tightens as I recognize the man as the one who killed my parents, Zideka. I keep moving down the hall and see the scene from my memory woven into cloth. The dragon is burning down the buildings and the man is standing beside the dragon. I knew they were connected. I always knew it! That bastard will pay for taking them away from me!
The next few aren’t completely finished yet. But one shows the boy all grown up, and beside him are three more figures. A Felidal, a Kanonian, and another human male. Each one has a symbol above their heads. The blonde male has a bow and arrow above his head, the Felidal has a piece of gold inside of a hand, the Kanonian has a spell book above his head, and finally the figure in the middle. He has a bear paw above his head. Each of the four figures are covered in a heavenly light.
The next few sheets of cloth are blank but near the end, they are clad in color. The next colored one, depicts the red-eyed man, capturing the blonde male figure and taking him to a stone castle. The final tapestry sends me through a ripple. It’s me, staring at the tapestries, which show me staring at the tapestries. I freeze again as a breath hitches itself in my lungs. How is this all possible? Where the hell am I anyway?
The screams start back up and they are even closer now. They are echoed down this stone hall way that seems like it will never end, but they are clearer than before. Along with the screaming is a voice I didn’t hear before. Another voice is taunting the screamer. The voice is a male's and the scream is one I have heard before.
“Grady?” I draw my sword and sprint down the hall way. The screams grow louder and the laughing continues. The smell of the smoke strengthens as I run closer. It seems that no matter how far or how fast I run, I can never reach the end.
“Michael!” The screaming voice cries out, and hearing that Breetanyian accent I know exactly who is being tortured.
“I’m coming!” I run faster and finally reach the other room. When I walk through the arched door way, I can’t believe my eyes. Grady is chained to the stone wall by his wrist with his legs dangling. His weapons are on the floor but his clothes remain on. Him hanging there isn’t what surprises me. It is the fact he is on fire. His entire body is engulfed in flames, bright blue flames that lick and burn his skin. His clothes are not burned and his skin shows no evidence of the fire, but his screams say it all. He is in agonizing and unbelievable pain. Magical fire is a deadly power to have.
I turn to see where the fire is coming from and I see the dark purple hooded figure, smiling a bright wicked sharp grin at me.
“You finally showed up? Took you long enough. I thought your friend here wasn’t going to make it. But now that you are here, I won’t need him anymore,” he looks toward Grady who is panting now that the fire has stopped.
The blonde looks up to me and gives a weak smile. He opens his mouth to say something but suddenly his eyes widen and he tries to gasp. His eyes look down and I follow his gaze. In his chest is a single arrow right through the heart. I flinch and reach my hand out but something stops me. It’s like an invisible barrier. When it registers in Grady’s mind what he sees, he glances back to me and smiles. Idiot! He can’t be smiling now. Doesn’t he realize what’s going on? I still don’t even know how I got here? Let alone why Grady is here!
But, never the less, he gives me that shite-eating grin and chuckles. “It’s been fun, Michael. Thank you.”
“Grady, no!” I beat at the barrier and watch as his body turns a golden color. Then his body fragments into pieces that blow away in the wind.
Zideka merely shrugs like it was nothing and aims his sword at me. “You and I have unfinished business, boy.”
“You bastard,” I whisper under my breath and glare at him. “You’ll pay for taking them all away from me.”
With a fury of 1,000 suns, I charge at the man with a loud battle cry that sounds like a bear roar. Our swords clash with a loud chink.
And I wake up.
I am back in the inn room and Grady is here in the bed with me. I reach over to feel his hair, which isn’t a far reaching considering his head is on my chest. The hair feels like a smooth fur pelt against my fingers tips. Okay, so that was a dream and everything is okay. Grady isn’t dead. My hand drops down behind the lad’s back with my heavy sigh. What the hell was all that? It was too real to be a dream. It was much more than that.
I reach up with my right arm and rub the cold sweat off my face since my left arm is pinned down by Grady’s snuggling body. Wait, what? I look back and, just as I first thought, the lad has his arm wrapped around my torso with his head on my chest. If I hadn’t just had that mad dream, I would have (and should have) kicked him away and off the bed. But with all things considering, it was nice to know someone who was now under my charge hadn’t been shot in the heart.
Outside of the inn, the noises of the city are just starting with the sun rise. I always heard Meetal is a city that never sleeps, seems it was right. Normal shops open and close from eight in the morning to eight in the night, but I can hear traders already making barters through the open window of the inn room. Grady must have opened it before he came to bed because I know I didn’t do that. The sun peaks over the sea horizon from the east and with its rays come the heat on my face. I try to raise up by Grady unconsciously pulls me back down to the straw bed.
Jackass, even when he isn’t awake he is still annoying. I take my right arm and do my best to move his arm off my torso. For a scrawny man in build, his arms are well toned and heavy. It takes three tries before I finally move his arm off my body. I throw his arm to the other side of the bed and his body follows it as he rolls over to face away from me. With a huff, I stand from the cot and go over to where I laid my clothes last night. Everything was still here thankfully. Idiot opened the window and could have let in a competent thief. All of our supplies and what little bit of gold rounds I have left would have been lost.
Before I put on my clothes, I take a moment to close the open window and pull the curtains to. A morning person I am not, so seeing the sun has risen the same time as I have does not sit well with me. For a short second, I look outside and see people already trading and bartering their wares. The brothel is still at full effect coming into the early morning from a night of sin. Sea gulls fly overhead, making their annoying caws to one another for food. There are few clouds in the sky. My warm face welcomes the cool of the sea breeze mist that comes from the harbor that is right in front of us. Didn’t mean to, but it seems we got a room with a view.
I close the curtains and tie them to. Today is the day that I set out to find Zideka and make him pay. What was that place in my dream? I try to remember details from the stone castle. It was made out of a dark ore, most likely onyx or ebony. Ores like that are hard to come by naturally and are only found in small veins. Whoever owned that castle must have found the jack pot. Other than the material the castle was built of, I remember those silk tapestries. They told a story, each one was a chapter to the tale. They were mostly of my life. That had to be me, from birth, to childhood and now even to adult. I look in the mirror and see my red curly hair and brown eyes. The image before me flashes to the second to last tapestry. Where the red head was standing in the middle of a small group. The image flashes back and forth before landing on just my reflection in the mirror.
I look over at the sleeping Grady. He was the blonde man standing beside me in the image, but who were the other two? A Felidal and a Kanonian. Something tells me this was more than a dream, though. I just have a gut feeling that Moogar gave me this dream as a warning. In my dream, it was only Grady and myself. Whoever these other two figures are, I need to find them. They must be the champions of the divines, that’s what the heavenly light meant right? I’m not sure right now, but I know one thing is for sure. It’s a good thing that twig sleeping away on the cot followed me and pestered me after all.
Before we head out today, I need to meet with Haywood. He said he would give me the rest of the information today. The bastard knew that was the only way to get me to stay in the city to rest. Sometimes he is too clever for his own good. He could’ve made a good lord if he stayed in his own city and with his family. But he said he would have been a mad king if anything, so he thought it best to go on the road life.
The cot strains and creeks from the other side of the room. A yawn echoes along with the creeks and then a groan. Grady rises from the bed with a bright smile. He is already full of energy and he just woke up. Is there anything that brings this guy down? Because so far there doesn’t seem to be.
“Morning, Michael,” he says while he yawns. Again his accent messes up my name and it sounds like “my-cool”.
“Morning, Grady. Did you sleep well?” I ask as I pull my leather vest on over my white cotton shirt.
He gives a vague nod while he rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Sure did. Best sleep I had in a while actually.”
“Good,” I give a smile, well more of a smirk, “Because you are going to need the rest. Today we set out to look for Zideka. I have no idea where he is so we will be scouring most of Jerensi-a.”
“I thought Haywood said he had a last known location,” he stands from the cot and stretches his back.
“Just because he has a last known location, doesn’t mean that the guy is still there.” I tie up my vest and then pull on my boots. “Remember the Kanonian I killed a couple of nights ago?” He gives me a nod as he goes to put on his own clothes. “I had been tracking that dog for weeks. His last known location was in Snow Creek, but the last person who saw him there said he went to The Keep. Long story short, he was in Creeten when I finally caught up to him.”
The blonde nods again with a vague hummed response. “So, we could be traveling for weeks?”
“Maybe months and, Divines forbid it, maybe even years,” I give a shrug. My longest hunt was only two months long. So hopefully, this one will be quick and easy to I can finally get my revenge on him. More of avenging my parents and their death.
I would expect a groan or something of protest to come from the man, but instead, he merely smiles as he pulls his boots on and straps them. “Well, this will be one adventure then.” I roll my eyes and grab my leather jacket, pulling it over my shoulders and fastening it. Hopefully, I could gain some of his hyper energy during this trip. Doubt it.
