Part 1 Epilogue: The Dream

I never liked the phrase “fated encounter.” I couldn’t stomach the words before my change and they were even more repulsive to me after. Yet Thane was drawing ever closer to the one he was looking for, the one who had all the answers to the questions that he didn’t yet know to ask. If this wasn’t a fated encounter, what was?

He didn’t know why he sought her out, but ever since he heard of her existence, there was a tugging in the back of his mind that told him he needed to find her. Almost as if there was some outside force compelling him to search for her. A sort of divine inspiration.

Although the true source of this compulsion could hardly be called “divine”.

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Thane was dreaming.

He was running through Twinford again, he recognized some of the streets, but this was definitely not one of his memories. He had never traveled through Twinford at night.

“Are you all right?” a man’s voice said.

Thane saw a concerned town guard approaching and he saw his reflection in the breastplate. It wasn’t him at all, it was a young girl, who looked exhausted and frightened. He had seen her before, this was the same young blonde girl that he saw during Gailwyn's experiments. This was the one he was curious about.

Suddenly the guard's face seemed shocked, “It’s you.” He turned behind him and shouted, “I’ve found her! Call the knights!” He drew his weapon but before he could attack his head jerked to the side and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. When he collapsed to the ground, there was a woman behind him smiling while tapping a small club in her hands.

The young girl spoke with a weak voice while trying to catch her breath. “You didn’t need to do that Nighthawk, you’ve already helped us enough.”

“Please, that’s not the first guard I’ve assaulted and it certainly won't be the last. Besides, you and your boys saved my sisters. You helped me more than I could have ever asked for, and I owe you a great debt. I’m not going to let those pious altar boys take you.” She looked sullen for a moment before speaking again. “I found them, one of them is safe, he took an arrow to his thigh but he should be healed by the time we reach him. I’m sorry, but the other wasn’t so fortunate and the arrow pierced his heart..”

Tears began to well up, blurring her vision. “Can we escape? They have the gates blocked.”

“There is one way, your companion is already waiting for you by the east wall.”

They traveled to an area that Thane was familiar with, a ruined and abandoned area of the town that was destroyed to make way for the aqueduct. They began to climb one of the abandoned buildings and they saw a man in his twenties waiting for them at the top.

“My lady, praise Flauros you are safe. We have a way out of the town, but we must hurry.” He pointed to a rope ladder that was hanging from the aqueduct down to where they were standing. “The machinery isn’t running, so we can follow the aqueduct out of town to the river, and climb down the machinery outside the city walls.”

“There they are!” there was a shout nearby and they looked down to see several heavily armored knights. Each of them had a symbol Thane had seen before, a decoration on the front of each pauldron that curved up like small wings.

“I always hated how persistent fanatics are,” said Nighthawk. “ I can hold them off here. I have a dozen men hiding in the area that will attack on my signal, we should be enough to keep a few Paladins busy.”

“But they are paladins and you are a…”

“Nightmare? Nocturnal? Soul eater?” she laughed. “True they might try to label me a demon if I reveal myself here, but don’t worry about that. This city already has me labeled as a thief and a murderer, so how much worse can it get? Now climb.”

The young girl reached for the rope ladder as Nighthawk pulled a mask over her face. Suddenly a black liquid sprang forth from her body to the sound of shredding cloth and instantly hardened. In a second it had wrapped her arms like armor, and extended into a set of bladed claws. On her back the liquid had hardened into a pair of bat-like wings. The girl climbed as fast as she could, unable to keep watching the Succubus as she leapt from the top of the building to swoop down on the knights.

She reached the top with her companion and ran across the aqueduct until they had crossed the city walls. The mechanism that raised the water was locked in place, and the girl looked for a way down and saw many town guards gathered at the bottom.

“We’ll have to jump, use magic to slow our fall and land on the other side of the river. If we run we can make it to the woods before they can even make it to the bridge to cross and follow us.”

They jumped together and landed on the other side of the river. Then they ran. They ran East until their lungs were about to burst and didn’t stop until they were surrounded by trees. The sun was beginning to creep over the horizon and the two let out ragged laughter.

“We can….we made it.”

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Thane woke up and made sure he was in his own bed. That dream was a bit too real. The exhaustion he felt, the details. He looked out the window, it faced the East and saw the sun rising, just like in his dream it even seemed to have the same hue. Was it really a dream?

This was too much, he needed to know the truth, to find out what that really was. He got dressed as quickly as he could and went through the keep looking for Marcus. When he found him they both began to talk at the same time.

“I need to head to Twinford today.”

“I’ll need you to head to Twinford today.”

Marcus laughed, “What a coincidence, I guess it must be fate!”

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Back in Thane’s room a shadow began to move. A beautiful woman with wavy black hair and sapphire eyes stretched her arms as she emerged from the shadow and looked out the window at the rising sun.

“I hope that was good enough, I swear sometimes my mistress makes the strangest requests.”

Solier placed her foot on the windowsill and jumped out. With one massive leap she cleared the training grounds and the high defensive walls to land silently and effortlessly on the ground outside of the fortress.

She paused to brush her hair back behind her ears, “So that was Aille’s son? He was kind of cute.” The Eisheth smiled as her image twisted and disappeared, leaving no sign that she was ever there.