Chapter 26: NIGHTMARE
The sky rumbled thick and heavy, a wounded giant groaning above, painting and punishing the firmament with jagged streaks of crimson lightning.
The storm had grown monstrous; darkness swelled like a living tide, and every flash stained the atmosphere a furious red, its thunder rolling like an ancient drumbeat that seemed to rattle the planet’s marrow.
Inside a wooden house that groaned under the tempest, Dax lay sprawled on a narrow bed. The timbers moaned and stretched, each plank creaking as though exhausted from decades of holding itself upright. Candlelight flickered along the warped walls, casting trembling shadows like nervous ghosts.
Then, from within the dim room, a voice slashed the hush.
"What kind of coma is this, asshole? Wake the fuck up."
It wasn’t a normal voice. It had a piercing, serrated timbre, sharp and cutting like talons raking against glass. Each word rolled with a dry, predatory rasp, yet it was muffled and distorted, as though spoken underwater, or drifting from some other plane of existence straight into Dax’s ear.
He drifted in the half-world between sleep and waking, yet still the voice threaded through his consciousness.
"Hey, hey, wake up... the fuck is wrong with you?" it pressed again, the sound like a battle-cry dressed as a whisper, metallic and avian, shrill yet intelligent, as if the air itself had grown a beak.
A violent glow flared across the room, as an arterial flash of crimson lightning teared through the heavens.
The thunder that followed came like an avalanche of iron, a long
Grrrrrrrrrrr,
that shook the floorboards beneath him. With a gasp, Dax eyes flew open, and he bolted upright as if the thunder had struck his spine.
"Oh, asshole... now you are awake," the voice croaked, sardonic and oddly triumphant.
He pressed a hand to his temple; his vision swam in dizziness before it slowly dilated and steadied. Spinning about, he searched for the owner of the disembodied voice, and found no one.
His eyes flicked over the candlelit sconces, the low wooden ceiling with its water-licked stains, the scarred table littered with open books, and the rough walls plastered with curling posters of forgotten eras, a cage containing some kind of bird; heaps of clothes piled like defeated soldiers, others hanging from rusted poles; A single rope dangled from the ceiling like a tired serpent’s tail. But no one stood there.
"Hello?" he called, his voice unsure, as though testing reality itself.
"Hey! I’m right here... what an insult," came the reply.
This time Dax’s gaze found it: on a small wooden stool to his left stood a metal cage, a candle flickering beside it. Inside perched a hawk; black-feathered, with fine white streaks tracing its lower body like silver brushstrokes.
Dax blinked, astonished at the tiny talking creature. The little creature cocked its head and stared back with cold, intelligent eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped as he looked around again.
The place... this was not the room Naya had shown him. Its walls, its smell, its old wood, it looked like something from an ancient drama, one of those medieval sets in Game of Thrones: creepy, cramped, and utterly alien.
"Where am I?" he demanded. "What the fuck is this place?"
He raked his memory for clues, how he’d arrived here... but nothing surfaced. His last recollection was slumping onto his bed.
The only answer came as a mocking trill of laughter from the hawk.
"Hehehehehehe... hohohoho..."
"What an interesting situation and question," it said in its strange, sharp voice, bobbing its head in a birdish gesture, as if punctuating its own irony.
Dax tried to stand but felt unbearably heavy, as though three boulders had been lodged inside his chest. Maybe he’d eaten too much, but no, this was fatigue... like gravity had grown personal.
He squinted at the caged bird.
"What the fuck are you?"
"Don’t look at me that way, asshole!" it shrieked back, voice cracking like a blade of wind.
Then it paused, feathers ruffling, and spoke in a softer, guilty tone.
"Eeh... sorry, eeh... I’m not a bad bird. It’s just that I’ve been having some... anger issues lately." It shuffled closer to the bars of its cage.
"Do you mind letting me out?"
The plea was absurd. The hawk pressed its face to the bars, eyes gleaming with exaggerated sorrow, wings drooping like a melodramatic actor clutching its chest.
Dax raised an eyebrow. The creature was the least of his problems. He only wanted to know what was happening to him and how he’d ended up here. ’Please, let this not be another Harness or trial, he thought.’
"Show some respect and let me outta here!" the hawk barked again, snapping him from his thoughts. Clearly he had been thinking and forgot to answer the bird on time.
But...
"You..." Dax said, pointing at it, irritation sharpening his voice.
"You are a bad, stinking hawk."
The words seemed to pierce its tiny heart. It scampered backward, clutching its chest with a feathery wing like a scandalized courtier.
"That’s a new word... stinking," it whimpered.
Dax almost pitied it... almost, when suddenly the door screamed open.
A cloaked, hooded figure entered, carrying a silver tray with a cup atop it. The door shut behind her with a sigh. When she saw Dax awake, she moved quickly to the other stool by the bed, set the tray down, and drew back her hood.
She had hair the color of deep ocean at midnight, blue strands spilling over her shoulders. Her eyes matched: two tranquil sapphires that glimmered even in the candlelight. Her smile, when it appeared, was like dawn breaking over ruins.
The baggy, black, battered cloak she wore swept the floor, concealing most of her form but hinting at the subtle rise of her breasts beneath the fabric. The garment smelled of rain, old smoke, and something older still, as though it had known centuries of wandering.
Neither Dax nor the hawk spoke. They only stared as she sat beside him. Then, without warning, she leaned forward and embraced him.
He stiffened, surprised, yet some buried part of him exhaled, an inexplicable happiness blooming at the contact of this stranger.
Astonished, he hugged back, and some strange joy flickered inside him, a warmth as if a long-lost melody had brushed his heart.
"Oh bless the skies and the seven seas, for they hath brought back thine son, my brother!" she cried.
’Is that King James freaking language?’ Dax thought. ’Am I in the Bible now?’
Her arms released him and she gazed unwaveringly into his eyes.
"I thought thou wast dead, Stevon," she said.
"Clara..." Dax breathed, startling himself. How did he know her name? And wait.... did she just call him Stevon?
No way.
He snatched the silver tray from beneath the cup and held it before his face. In its blurred reflection stared not Dax but "Stevon".: green eyes, long blue hair, a mature, handsome face that was not his own.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" he yelled, clutching at alien skin.
"No, no, no, no..."
"What aileth thee, brother? Art thou not glad to be alive? Or dost thou still desire to commit suicide?" she asked, voice a hymn of antique sorrow.
"Suicide?" he echoed, eyes darting to the rope hanging from the ceiling, the same rope of Stevon’s demise.
Strangely, Dax now held the memories of this Stevon, the feelings and love for his sister Clara. But Stevon was dead... hung himself... and somehow Dax had taken over his body.
"Brother, ’tis well. For that which made thee despair is gone, and thy prayers are answered," Clara said softly.
"What... ?" Dax began, but the door burst open again.
Armored guards flooded into the room.
Their breastplates gleamed dull silver, engraved with curling runes. Beneath hung black skirt-like loins of heavy leather, and their feet were bound in intricate sandals laced high up the calf. Their helmets curved like the snouts of wolves, and each bore a bow of yew strung with crimson cord. As they hurtled inside, they formed a crescent around the bed, arrows aimed.
Then another soldier entered, different from the rest. His armor was darker, trimmed in gold, with a long sash of blood-red cloth hanging from his belt (a commander’s mark.) Spikes of metal rose from his pauldrons like a crown of thorns, and his gauntlets were etched with sigils of rank.
His face was rough and scarred, his bald head glinting in the firelight. At his arrival the others shifted, making a path.
He halted at the bedside and looked down at Dax.
"Stevon," he intoned, voice like gravel in a storm,
"thou art summoned by the Queen."
Dax swallowed hard under the man’s gaze.
"W-why?" he stammered. Somehow the host he was occupying felt even weaker than he remembered; the small upgrades of being a Beyonder seemed to have bled away.
The commander ignored the question, turning on his heel.
"Seize him," he ordered.
"Harm him not. The Queen would have him fresh and alive."
At once the soldiers lunged, seizing Dax and dragging him off the bed.
"Let go of me!" he shouted, struggling, but his resistance was like striking stone with paper.
Clara had risen now, to his shock showing no alarm at the sight.
"Clara!" he called. "Help me! Come on, help me, sister!"
But Clara only bowed her head.
"’Tis for the greater good, Stevon. The Queen hath accepted thy proposal, and thou shalt not die by thine own hand now that she hath accepted it."
"What?" Dax bellowed as they dragged him to the door.
"No! Clara! She will kill me... she will kill me... please!"
But the guards hauled him out, his cries swallowed by the dark corridor beyond.