The Realm

Fire painted the midnight sky a black tainted orange. Smoke, blood, and burning flesh assaulted my nose, making my eyes water. Even when I brushed an arm across them to clear my vision, everything around me was blurred, like trying to see through frosted glass. I tried to lift the veil but it was as futile trying to push off a heavy wet blanket with the strength of a small child. A hand appeared, reaching for me, the first clear image I’ve seen in this dreamscape. As I realized it was but a dream, it began to tear at the edges and fade. I reached for the hand, desperately trying to hang on to the dream. So close, a finger’s breadth away…sapphire embers burned into my eyes, searing my mind…

“Oi! Wake up! We’re late!”

I woke instantly at sound of the insistent male bellow coming from directly below me. Still reeling from the dream, I swiftly rolled to the right, swinging my legs over the edge of the bunk, succeeding in kicking Ronin directly in the face with my heel.

“Agh!” Grabbing my ankle, he yanked me down. The moment my unrestrained foot hit the wooden floor, I launched myself backwards, catching him full in the chest. We ended up sprawled on his bunk with me on top, my knee at his throat, hands on his shoulders.

“I ought to kill you,” I said mildly, only slightly breathless. It was a threat we often made to one other. Well, me to him at least. “I had that dream again and I was this close to finally seeing it clearly. Then you start bellowing like a madman, having me believe we were under attack or at the very least someone was castrating you with a blunt object. And when I wake up to such a ghastly wail to find that you are, in fact, not being castrated by a blunt object and are simply yelling for me to get up, it puts me in a rather unpleasant disposition. Pray tell, what the hell are we late for?”

A brief silence followed my monologue. Then, “Damn, you’re quick in the morning. Downright unfair, if you ask me.”

“What are we late for, Ronin?!”

Ronin grinned up at me. “Why, we’re late to being early.”

Turning slightly, I glanced out the tall, narrow window near the bunk. The midnight blue sky was tinted pink and yellow of first sunrise. It was barely past dawn.

“Son of a bitch!” I shrieked. Through sheer willpower, I resisted throttling him to death. I rolled off him and slumped against his pillows, defeated.

Rubbing his chest, he winced. “Did you have to launch your knobbly ass knees into my chest? I swear, they could be used as deadly weapons.”

I glared at him, summoning as much indignation as was possible at the crack of dawn.

Ronin’s grin faded. “Hey, did I really interrupt the dream? I know its been bothering you for awhile now.” No strangers to magick and the world of sorcerie, we both knew dreams aren’t always as harmless as they seem.

I shook my head with a sigh. “No, it was already lost before you woke me. I simply dislike being woken so…abruptly.”

He punched me lightly in the arm.

“Come on, I hear Akira in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, you most likely woke up the entire house, even with the silencing spells Conall placed in the doors. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t stick a knife somewhere unpleasant.”

I was correct in expecting Conall to be a bit irritated with Ronin, a quivering butter knife embedded in the wall near the door we entered a testament to his less-than-happy mood. Had Ronin not turned at the last moment, the dull knife would indeed have castrated him. Perhaps I should try my hand at prophecy. For most, it would be a far more desirable occupation than a mercenary.

“Damn. I missed,” Conall said, returning his attention to the mountain of scrambled eggs and sausage on his plate. Ronin and I took a seat as Akira brought an enormous steaming skillet nearly over-flowing with eggs to the table.

“If we weren’t low on egg supply, I’d hit you outside the head with this pan. As it is, I’ll have to wait ‘til after breakfast when it’s empty. May I ask what you were screaming about this morning? I thought we were being assaulted by demons from the lowest rung of hell.”

He forked in some egg. “Close. I was waking up Ashe. Pass the salt please.”

Using magick, I jerked the front legs of his chair out from under him. He yelped as his ass made contact with the wood floor. Akira calmly stepped over him and offered the pan of eggs to me.

“No thanks.” She and Conall both frowned. As a sorcerie, my body depleted massive amounts of energy as a price for my magick, which meant I’m supposed to eat twice as much as any other being. “I’m not hungry right now, I have something to do.”

“Ashe…” Akira’s pale blue eyes were concerned as her gaze bored into mine. I looked away.

“I’m fine. I’ll eat later, I promise.” Slipping into my soft, worn leather boots, I pulled down the short drop ladder in the far corner of the kitchen and climbed up to a small circular deck made of wooden planks.

Early rays of sunlight weakly filtered through the canopy of enormous leaves that acted as an overhead for the deck, casting a soft green light upon me. Rainwater trickled off the leaves and I made a mental note to collect some later, for magickal purposes.

Hundreds of feet below me on the forest floor, I could hear the sounds of life stirring. Leaning back against the railing that encircled the deck, I tilted my head back to let the cold rainwater trickle down my scalp. The cool touch was a welcome relief, calming my racing thoughts. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, willing myself to stillness. Though meditation was never my strong suit, being here, in the calmness of Yasonya Forest, it came easily to me, serenity flowing through my veins.

“Am I interrupting?” Conall’s soft voice came from somewhere to my left.
“No, you’re not.” I opened my eyes slowly, reluctantly. For a moment, I was disoriented; when I opened my eyes, it had seemed as though I saw the world through crystal, silver dewdrops clinging to my lashes. But only for one fleeting moment. When I glanced at him, he wore a peculiar expression as he studied me.

“What?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “It’s nothing. What I came out here to ask is…are you all right?” he finished somewhat weakly, as though it wasn’t what he had originally intended to ask. I knew he wanted to know about the dream but was too polite to ask.

“No, I don’t think I am. There’s something…” I trailed off, gazing into the distance. “I feel…chaotic. Restless. The dream is coming more often now, and I can still feel it in my mind like…something’s there, tugging. Whispering, I don’t know!” Frustration laced my words, my voice. Irritated, I raked a hand through my already loose and disheveled braid of silver streaked black hair. Fingertips at my temple, I willed away the headache that was starting up again.

“Hey, don’t worry yourself about it.” Conall took a step towards me. “I just wanted to know, are you still okay for tonight? We can postpone—“

“No,” I replied immediately. “Lewen’s daughter is of utmost importance. We will not leave her to die because I had a bad dream.”

“It’s more than a bad dream and you know that.”

“I also know that it’s nothing so serious that we have to put everything on hold. Really, Conall, it’ll be all right. I…” I stopped myself. He smiled in a sad sort of way.

“What, no promise?”

“Not if I have no way of keeping it. You know that.”

“Yeah.” He looked off into the forest, silent. “I just…you know you’re like my family, you are my family, along with Akira and that idiot in there.” He jerked his head towards the doorway.

“I know. Conall…something is going to happen tonight, I won’t lie. I don’t what or when or where. But…I don’t want you to worry. I’m fairly certain it’s nothing…bad,” I finished lamely, knowing how hollow the reassurance fell.

“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“The bad things will happen no matter how much you don’t want them to. We just have to be prepared for them, is all.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘lose me’? I’m not going anywhere.”

He sighed. “You’re not the only one with bad dreams, Ashe.”

I opened my mouth to respond but was cut short by an unearthly wail emitting from our home we jokingly referred to as the “tree house”. Conall and I both sighed in unison as we recognized it as belonging to Ronin.

“I swear, those two can’t be kept in the same room for more than 10 minutes—“

“Five,” I said.

“—without trying to kill each other. Well, Akira trying to kill Ronin, anyway.” Still muttering, Conall retreated back down the ladder. Glancing out into the forest one last time, I followed.

***

Late afternoon found us preparing for the evening’s activities. As I sat sharpening my knives, Ronin was, futilely, attempting to cover his thick copper hair in a black hood. Large tufts kept sticking out in the front and when he tried to simply shove them back in, the hood was lumpy and uncomfortable. Cursing, he yanked it off again, his hair sticking up wildly. I laughed.

“Shut up!” he wailed in despair, most unbefitting to the master swordsman mercenary that he was.

“Here’s a theory; why not just use glamour to hide your hair color like everyone else here?”

“Because unlike some people, I have no magickal ability whatsoever and those pill things make my head tingle and itch.” He scrunched his face for emphasis.

Rolling my eyes, which I had perfected to an art form from dealing with Ronin, I flicked a glance at him in the mirror. From his scalp, going outwards to the ends of his hair, it slowly began turning a bright fuchsia color. Smiling, I returned to my task at hand as he shrieked in alarm, scrubbing at his hair as if it would make it return to normal.

Our bedroom door flew open and Conall, dressed in similar black attire, strode in. Akira followed silently, laughing to herself as she took in Ronin’s altered hair.

“By the gods, now what are you going on about in here?” was Conall’s greeting.

“Ashe is tormenting me again! Look what she’s done to my hair! It’s pink!”

I chortled, then frowned at the blade I held. Was that a nick I detected along the razor’s edge? Muttering, I put it back in its respective sheath and selected a new one while Ronin carried on with his histrionics.

“Yes, that’s a very nice look for you. Ashe, can you please turn his hair back before he keels over in agony?”

“He said he needed to disguise his hair somehow, so I was merely lending a helpful hand. I’m innocent here!”

Conall snorted and Ronin muttered something I doubt was complimentary.

“You’re guilty of a lot of things and innocence sure the hell isn’t one of them. You guys almost ready?”

I slid the last blade into its sheath on the side of my thigh and stood up, pulling on the mask that hid the lower half of my face. Ronin did the same. I couldn’t help but chuckle at his hair, the ridiculous color clashing horribly with his dark “deadly assassin” outfit. At least he didn’t need the hood anymore.

Conall rolled his eyes. He’d glamoured his long silver hair into a short non-descript brown like Akira had done to hers but left his eyes the same jade green. I’d glamoured my long silver-streaked black hair into short, spiky tresses with red streaks instead, also changing my silver eyes to the same cherry color as my new hair.

All four of us wore black; dressed to kill…literally. Ronin stood out considerably with his altered hair color. I left it as it was.

I could tell Conall was using every bit of his self-control to refrain from rolling his eyes again.

“Yes, I can tell we’re going to be the epitome of subtle.”