All sentient or semi-sentient creatures share a common trait, and that trait is their ability to dream. Sometimes the dreams show our memories, our aspirations, or warn us against our failings. And sometimes they only show us our deepest fears.

Asha, leader of Clan Haksa’ho’min

Darkness.

Darkness and silence were the only constants of that world.

I was standing in a plain of nothing, faintly wondering what I should do. Restlessness made me fidget, though I couldn’t remember why I should be restless. Since nothingness is unchangeable, how could I want to influence it?

Why was I here anyway? I didn’t felt like I belonged here, but then, where did I belong? How could I even know that places other than the void existed?

The silence oppressed my soul, suffocating me.

Something was missing, but what?

I walked in the void, getting neither tired, nor hungry or thirsty.

I walked, and walked, until despair gave birth to a realization.

I was alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I shouldn’t be alone.

I didn’t recall faces or voices, but I knew there should have been others with me.

Voices…I knew what a voice was. Voices made songs, where were the songs of my mind?

Disappeared, all gone, lost in the silence.

Then I would make them anew! I would shatter the everlasting silence in songs!

I closed my eyes, focusing on the ever present silence.

Imagining a sound, I could almost hear it, a single pure note slashing the void curtain.

Then another. And another. I linked my notes in a golden chain, glowing from an inner fire.

As I opened my eyes, my golden chain was hovering around me like an obedient pet. With a smile I poured more music in the golden links, sending it spiraling across the void. A flash of brightness erased the endless night, forcing me turn my face…

I suddenly awoke with a gasp. What the hell? This had been the strangest, and arguably the worst, nightmare I ever had. Just the memory of the loneliness was enough to make me shiver.

A feint air current reached me, helping cool my sweating body. I softly padded to the window, widening the opening slightly. That smell again…where did it come from?

The feeling of wrongness kept increasing. It was too silent, not a single pixie in sight, not even a cicada calling.

I blinked, not sure of what I had just seen. There again, a swift reflection of something in the street, avoiding the lights.

Now thoroughly spooked, I opened the bedroom’s door, almost stumbling in Storm’s arms. His urgent whisper was barely audible.

“Good, you’re awake. Go get Uriel, there are enemies coming here. I’ll buy us some time.”

He silently faded in the darkness of the house without waiting for an answer.

I walked to my father’s door as silently as I could, opening it without knocking. He didn’t react when I shook him, laying in his bed like a dead body.

Breathing deeply, I tried to control my increasing panic. Running around in circles wouldn’t be of help to anyone, and we didn’t have time for hysterics.

I knew Uriel had told me not to try new things without his guidance, but I figured it was easier to get forgiveness later at this point than hoping the situation would resolve itself.

I called the dream walking state, running along the glittering path I created between us.

I could tell clearly when I left my dream to enter his, as the scenery turned to an ancient fir forest with an oppressive feel to it, as if the trees were watching my every move. I kept following the path deeper in the forest, shivering as the branches snagged in my hair or totally inappropriate nightgown.

I might have been able to do something about it, but I wasn’t going to experiment in my father’s dream more than I had to just because I was uncomfortable.

I stopped at a break in the tree line, appalled at the sight before me.

An ashen wasteland stretched in the horizon, farther than I could see, only broken by some rocks that had survived the desolation, and the scene unfolding a bit further, where the humongous pale gold bird that was my father was crying, his fiery tears hissing when they hit the ground.

At his feet rested the still, forlorn form of another much smaller bird, maybe half his size, with feathers of a rich brown color where blood hadn’t stained them. No more fire came from this one, his song lost in death.

Around them lied the half-burnt ruins of what had been a small village, destroyed by the flames of the old beast. Gone was the gentle silver fire I had seen when we met, replaced by ominous black flames writhing around his body.

Bile rose in my throat when I realized that the weird bumps around him where the grotesque contorted remains of burnt bodies, shrunken by the intense heat of the black fire. More glistening lumps that were probably the remains of their weapons reflected the light of the moon.

A shrill mourning cry echoed in the night, the fury and sorrow contained within unfathomable.

The temperature kept rising as the song of the phoenix weaved a spell of madness and destruction, more and more flames converging around him, compressing in a pitch black orb over the birds.

Shaking, I stepped through the barren ground, avoiding the corpses littering the area, only stopping in front of my father. How small I was compared to him didn’t help with the small voice panicky voice blabbering in my mind to flee the maddened big bad predator.

Guess my inner voice is saner than me.

Even more so considering what I was about do.

Calling again the golden chain again, I sent it upwards, coiling it around the bird’s neck, wrapping the other extremity around my arm. I needed to get his attention before he blasted the whole place to smithereens, and that was the quickest way to do so.

There was no way my puny biceps would be enough to make him lower his head, so I did the next best thing, using the chain to help me climb high enough to reach the sharp beak. Mustering my courage, I gave a sharp kick to the appendage big enough to cut me in two without the need for a second bite

.

Only then did he seem to notice that he was no longer the only living thing in the dreamscape, albeit the golden eyes didn’t seem to recognize me.

His mind slammed through mine, annihilating my pitiful defenses in a split second, the grief he had felt when we first met a pale shade of what was now pouring from him, his mind voice strong enough to make my own consciousness waver.

“Gone…all gone…They will pay…I’ll make them pay…”

Marshaling my resources, I sent another kick to his head about as effective as if a mouse tried to bite an elephant. I tried to copy him, sending my own feeble mind voice outside.

“Father, that is enough! Snap out of it or I’ll tell mom you’re the one who broke the blue vase!”

A very shocked bird was now staring at the puny little me, feathers ruffled in a downy ball and beak hanging open, the black orb dissipating with an almost sorry little pop. I might have laughed if I hadn’t been still hanging in mid-air clutching my chain.

The end-of-the-world scenery disappeared in a blink, replaced by my dreampath while Uriel went back to his usual human form.

In an uncharacteristic move, he wrapped his arms around me, hugging me tightly to his chest. The mind link between us evened out, allowing for a better conversation.

“You really plan on snitching to Maggs?”

“She already knows. She was happy actually, that vase was fugly, but since it was a gift we had to keep it.”

“I’ll replace it with a better one.”

“No you won’t, I’ve seen your taste in furniture.”

He sighed deeply, releasing me.

“How about you tell me what you’re doing in my mind when I’m dreaming of the past?”

“Crap, no time for that, we have company in the real world!”

“We have all the time we need, it is a very subjective value in here. Though there might be an explanation for the intensity of this particular dream.”

His fury rose visibly as I explained the event of the night, only glossing over my own dream.

“A rune somewhere and another dreamwalker, a very subtle one at that, that’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“So, how do we make sure they know how much we appreciated their little gift?”

“Do you remember what you did with the blood spiders disaster?”

“As much as I would like to say no, there’s no way I’d forget that.”

“Well, do it again. I’ll take the lead as soon as you unleash your pet song.”

“Ok. Just one thing before that.”

“Yes?”

I rose on my toes, planting a kiss on his cheek.

“You’ve got to remember, as long as we’re here you’ll never be alone anymore.”

I patted his cheek, then started to build my song before he could retaliate. Or so I thought.

“…You’re planning to fight in a nightgown? It sure is cute, but are you sure that’s the message you want to send?”

Crap, I had completely forgotten the nightgown issue. Too late now, my little sneaky song was raring to go. I’d have to console myself with the knowledge that at least I was wearing a grownup nightgown, not something with kittens or other miscellanies, and I was bare footed. No bunny slippers for me!

We followed the trace through an almost invisible path, hidden in moving shadows. This road was as cold as mine were warm, seemingly utterly devoid of life.

The path was still better than the dreamscape into which it led though, a frozen cave covered in living shades, their sibilant hissing echoing against the dank walls.

Two torches at the entrances provided only some meagre illumination, their light smothered after only a couple of meters. Their smoke combined with the musty smell of the cave in an unappealing stink pervading the area.

A repulsive altar sat in the middle of the cave, the deep groves carved in it still stained with old blood, a wavy blade laid on the side. The sigils carved on the pedestal of the altar glowed with the same sickly maroon-red than the disgusting symbols carved on the walls of the cave.

The most striking features of the place though, were the two people standing next to the altar, and the enormous, indistinct shape lost in the darkness of the back of the cave.

They looked utterly out of place, a distinguished couple in their cocktail fineries, dropped in a medieval torture chamber setting.

My father stepped in front of me, his straight back making him seem much bigger than his real height, golden hair almost glowing from the reflection of the torches.

An amused woman’s voice chimed in this dark dream, completely at odds with the whole “darker-than-thou” theme of the dreamscape.

“How nice of you to deliver yourself to our doorstep, my foolish little descendant. And you ever brought a gift with you! So thoughtful…had I known you had those aptitudes I would have come fetch you a long time ago.”

“Ah, but if you had done so, my love, there’s a good chance we’d have had to take the broodmare too, and then the other girl would have never been born.”

Her laugh tinkled like so many bells.

“True, true. So, let us welcome warmly our runaway grandchildren.”