Author: Cyhirae

Note: And now for some of the missing content of the original. I had hurried the story along to Baron last time, even though Golbez honestly had no desire to go there. That was always one of the weaker plot points in the original- so here is what was cut out at that point. And I did rather give Troia the short end of the intelligence stick in the last version to cut this scene and all related events to it out. ;

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Waking Nightmare

I awaken to a vicious cold closing all around me...clinging tighter than it ever had even on the moon as it pierces through the skin and delves into the bone. I have to force myself to rise; I'm going to freeze if I don't move, yet my body protests every motion as too painful. When did Troia ever become so cold? Certainly it had its own winters to contend with, but this was far beyond any mere 'winter'.

Cold like this belonged only in the void that lay between worlds. And yet, looking about myself...I stand in the inn I had laid down to sleep in, though the bed I had tossed Palom to lies devoid of him...not, however, of an occupant. None of them do, actually, save the one I rose from. Pitiful, withered forms with a sheen of somewhat translucent ice over them to offer some guard against the full display of the grisly reality...

These people had not died quickly. In the far corner lies what looked to've been an attempt to light a bonfire; within a building? I step carefully toward that pile of blackened wood...it, too, carries a heavy coating of ice. As do the figures curled on the floor or against the walls. People who had sought protection from this cold and found even fire lacked that power here.

I hurry out of the inn; something far more easily said than done. The stairs are more a ramp of the same ice that clings to everything else while the door was barricaded long before the ice added its own layer. It takes the strongest fire spell I can offer to cut through it all, only to find myself standing firmly in the middle of a continuing nightmare... Ice shattered trees, odd shapes that could be people frozen where they stood...

"What in the..." A distant sound catches my attention; a Crystal's soft chiming...though this sounds strained, off key. I set off through the streets, chasing that sound...the Crystal had been fine when I had laid the spell work come here; Troia had been fine. How could this have all happened? It feels so surreal I am half certain it must be a dream, like the other...but the biting of that cold is far too real to dismiss so easily.

The castle of Troia fared no better than the town. The walls are coated thickly in the ice that seems to dominate the world as far as I can see...though oddly, there's nothing of snow about it. It is only ice, sometimes clouded, sometimes translucent...I wish more of it were clouded. Unlike those people in the inn, these ones had died near instantly, frozen where they stood. The fear, the terror of knowing they were dying remains stark on their faces where the ice lets it shine through...a silent mockery of monuments in place of the gravestones they should have.

It remains the same through the confines of the castle; though some hope I hadn't even realized was stirring leaps to life on seeing the final room before the Crystal Chamber...the far wall has streamers of ice along it, thickening steadily as I watch...but it is not yet taken. The door is free of it as well, the ice recently broken at the bottom. So someone is still alive...

Not for much longer, they aren't...What are you doing in Troia? It's too late for this place.

That voice again. Not the one that had cast me out of the dream last time...this was the one that had first spoken. I firmly give a wordless shove to the invasion, feeling a bit of smug satisfaction at the surprise and exasperation that rises in response. I'm in no mood for someone else to be speaking in my mind; I'd had enough of that in my youth and then in struggling with that communal dream...

Be that way all you like; you'll have to set that pride aside sooner or later.

I make no response of any kind this time. Instead, I hurry to those doors, pulling them open. Within? ...Troia's fate is playing out in slower motion before my eyes. The eight sisters are gathered around their Earth Crystal, hands outstretched as they try to harness it to save their kingdom...an exercise in futility. But they can't do much else now, that is plain...the ice is creeping in thin sheets about them where they stand, slithering up their legs and twining about their arms...can't they see what's happening? The Crystal itself is slowly cracking as ice snakes around it, the glow steadily dimming.

"What are you doing, you damned fools? The Crystal cannot stop this!" They don't respond to my words; all they do is continue murmuring their prayers as the ice begins to spiderweb through their hair, across their cheeks...they'll be frozen statues before much longer, just like all the rest. "It's useless!"

So is trying to speak with them. You're little better than a phantom to those sisters...listen to their chants and take them back with you as a warning...and you should go soon, I'd say. You've stood still far too long.

At those words I look downward...where the ice has begun to coil about my own feet, sealing them to the floor. Vibrating through it, through the whole chamber those desperate prayers can be heard- echoed by the ice in some sort of sick, strange joke on their pleas...

"Save our lands, Crystal of Earth..."

"Give us strength to turn back this horror..."

"Save our people, Crystal of Earth..."

"Give us hope that we will survive..."

Alternating out, over and over, even as I begin my own desperate chants; fire spells to free myself of the ice. But for every bit I melt away, it only freezes back thicker, creeping steadily higher. My fate seems as inevitable as theirs; I cannot destroy it fast enough to escape. I can feel it sinking straight into the bone as it reaches my waist and begins to cut into my chest even as rivulets of it slide over my eyes, stealing my sight...

"Yeowch- damn, you're cold! What were you doing; casting blizzard in your sleep?!" That annoying and most certainly male voice has no place at all in that macabre scene; my eyes snap open, though I fast regret it as the light stabs painfully into them...Troia had been so dark despite all of that ice...even the torchlight of the inn is bright in comparison.

Torchlight? The inn? I sit up quickly, ignoring the ache it brings and the protest of Palom as he scrambles back out of my way, hand releasing my arm...yes, the inn, still bright with torches and the beds lying empty of frozen corpses...there are no bonfire remains in the far side, no gleam of ice on the walls or floor.

"...A nightmare...just a nightmare..." That's about all the explanation I care to give; and I'm not entirely sure who I'm saying it to. Palom or myself? Or perhaps to the one thing that has changed in the inn since I evidently went to sleep..it's slow to register after that panicked inspection, but the delicate clearing of a throat informs me that the mage and I aren't the only occupants any longer.

By the entry, one of the sisters stands with two of her guards in attendance...though my inspection of her is brief at best. I have to look away after that...I can recall that nightmare with a startling clarity...made even more so by a simple fact: I saw her there, among them. Her precise features, right down to the rings on those hands she'd held out so beseechingly to the Crystal...

And I had never been to Troia all my life. But it was just a nightmare...

"You would be the wizards who arrived by the castle earlier this day?" The sister's voice is soft, just as it had been in that nightmare as she'd spoken in chorus with the others...though the sickening feel of deja vu is shunted aside somewhat by the slight pause in her tone.

"In the moat, you mean." I spare a glare for Palom in that; he's safe enough to look at, being a face I've seen outside of that nightmare...and it was entirely his fault my aim had taken me into the water. "...I suppose there is little point in denying it; enough of your guards saw that particular fiasco." Palom simply crosses his arms at me, glaring right back and utterly unrepentant.

"Don't give me that look; you're the one who ran off! You're still under arrest in Mysidia you know; for the same reason I bet they're here!" He looks almost triumphant at that, a certain smugness that has me momentarily tempted to return him to a toad's form. If he wants to go puffing himself up over this, the least I could do was give him a form that could properly do so, eh? That sister's voice cuts through my attempts to get my thoughts in order enough to cast that rarely used spell, however, calling attention back to her.

"Then I would speak with you of that event. The Crystal reacted oddly when you did so-" I make a quick gesture to cut her off, heaving a sigh...though I can't make my eyes return to her face. I won't see her standing there talking to me; I'll be seeing her slowly freezing to death in my mind, chanting as her lips turn blue and her skin stiffens... I shudder sharply at the thought, glaring past Palom now as I try to find a torch or some other thing to glare at as I speak. Anything but recalling that scene of slow death...

"It was a spell miscast; it follows the ley lines the Crystals themselves do." Not quite true; but I am not about to admit I've been using their precious Crystals as my personal Devil's Road. ...Perhaps that is what is causing those strange dreams? Fatigue can do odd things to a person...and this woman would have spent much of her life before the Crystal of Earth; all eight of them would have.

Perhaps I picked up some images of them from the Crystal through the spell? That thought makes it easier to finally look to her, though not for long. Even with that theory to reassure me, it is an image that refuses to leave my mind for long. She looks typical enough of the people of Troia...long brown hair bound back by a flower decorated clip; robes of amber and soft brown with green edging draped about her...but for the colors, it looks much like the robes others here wear. They are simply done in the appropriate colors for a servant of the Crystal. That thought gives me more strength to push the image away...

Coincidence. It has to be coincidence.

"...You look like one who has seen a ghost. Come, both of you. I would discuss this...ley line spell of yours and the effects it had on the Crystal. You may not have intended harm, but you acted carelessly." The guards at her side move forward; normally I'd laugh. Troia's guardians were no warriors of Baron, and even those I could have dispatched with ease. The cold still clings to me, however...and frankly, a rather heavy feeling of disgust is overwhelming any humor I might otherwise be taking in this situation.

They don't even know who I am and I'm still being greeted with hostility. Before the guards can set about trying to drag me from the bed, however, the sister is stepping forward, waving them off after looking me over.

"See to the Mysidian; this one is no danger if we do not make him one, I think." The guards step back at that, going around instead to 'escort' a loudly protesting Palom out the door...though perhaps he's wiser than I thought on some levels. He's making plenty of noise, but not a single spell. Before me, the sister is holding her hand out to help me rise from the bed...another thing I would call laughable if not for the fact I find myself leaning heavily on her. My legs still feel numb; prickling now and then with that horrible cold that permeated the nightmare.

And I can feel that careful certainty I'd built up chipping away; I certainly hadn't felt like this when I had shifted myself from Mysidia to Troia... I couldn't blame the spell for that, could I? She gives a soft grunt of effort to support my weight until my legs have regained feeling enough to hold me up...frowning up at me in concern. How odd that feels, for anyone to spare that sort of look for me, beyond my uncle.

"...You're all but frozen..." Odd; she sounded a touch fearful rather than simply concerned. The rest of the walk to the castle is done in silence; even Palom has run out of things to say, beyond grumbles and kicks at stones in the path before us. More than once, he looks back to say something- whether to me or the sister, we never find out as the guards simply hustle him along.

The protests renew quite loudly once we're within the castle, however. The sister urges me to follow her into the room just before the chamber; a place I again have never set eyes on but remember with an unpleasant clarity from the nightmare. Even the places at which the guards stand is the same. That pleasant sense of security is rapidly chipping away with every step. When we reach the doors, the sister gestures for Palom to be kept in the room before it.

"This is between the sorcerer and we sisters; you may wait out here, Mysidian." Palom draws up short at that, fury coloring his face a brilliant scarlet as he crosses his arms while the guards cross their spears to keep him from advancing...a joke of a motion, to my mind. If this teenager had been of any use to Cecil as a child, I have to think he's more than capable of brushing off a pair of poorly armed and armored guards.

If not; my brother had some truly horrific taste in companions and I'm even more embarrassed about the fates of Scarmiglione and Cagnazzo.

"Then why did you drag me along?! I didn't do anything wrong! He's the one that's throwing dangerous spells around!" The sister pauses at that, looking to Palom first and then myself, musingly. "And he hurt my sister! You're going to go ahead and let him near your Crystal when he's doing things like that? Are you crazy?"

"Hm...and what have you to say to his accusations, sorcerer?" Odd, that's the second time she's used that title toward me. I shrug in response, giving a look that's surely condescending to Palom a moment before looking back to her.

"I wasn't aware his sister had laid the wards I bypassed; she simply went into backlash shock." 'Simply' probably isn't quite right; but if it hadn't killed her right off then it wasn't likely to do more than leave her sick and dazed for a few days. "It wasn't an attack, just a side effect. Try explaining that to him, however." She frowns at that...but makes no move to recall the guards from holding Palom back.

"I see; we will discuss your sister's condition when we are finished, Mysidian...though if it is what the sorcerer claims, your own folk should have seen to her already." With that, she turns and draws me into the chamber the eight of them hold council in. And it's a good thing, perhaps, I am having to lean on her still. My strength is being slow to return in the wake of that determined chill; and I would have much rather turned around and left on seeing it too looks like all else I saw in my dream. I likely would have, if I'd had the strength to do so.

It's giving the distinct feeling of standing before your own tomb, given what had begun to happen in that dream, just beyond those doors in the far wall... Doors the sister is still guiding me toward, even as the other seven fall into step behind us.

I stop a short ways from them, refusing to go any closer to that place. The gleaming walls and floors of those chambers will make it far too easy to recall that nightmare. She doesn't urge me onward, however- she slips away and allows the sister just behind us to take her place in supporting me as she stands before the doors, a touch swinging them open.

"Come forward, Golbez. The Crystal whispers there is much you have to tell us, and little time to make use of it."

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To Be Continued in: Revelations of Earth (Yes, a cliffhanger of sorts cuz this was getting long.)