Edge of Endarys

The Dream

I can see through their eyes. I can feel their emotions. We are tied to each other by a strong, magical bond of love teetering on lust that, at times, is hard to resist for them and for me. Before I found myself in their world, I was just a normal teenage girl with not-so-normal dreams.

Thick gray fog washed over my dream vision like a blanketed enigma and sent chills of apprehension down my spine. I could feel my body shiver while my mind's eye tried desperately to see anything beyond my own being. There was a bright flash of blue light and the fog circled into a tunnel before pulling me inside. As I soared through the tunnel, it changed from a grayish white to a brilliant blue. In another radiant flash of blue light, I was in another place looking through the eyes of someone else.

I was in a cold and unfamiliar cave. There was a stone altar between two lit torches that held a large, silver book. The path to the altar stone was lined with smaller torches as well as silver swords and shields of various types. All of the items were embedded with a symbol I could never quite make out. Water dripped now and then into large puddles off the sides of the path sending echoes throughout the cave.

Someone was talking to the woman I inhabited, a male voice. I had been dreaming about people I'd never met and places I'd never been for weeks before my birthday. The dreams were always from the eyes of a beautiful woman who was older than me and never quite in perfect focus.

"I do not think you should continue with this," he said. Even though the voices were never completely clear, like a radio with a sporadic signal, the timbre of his voice spoke directly to my heart. "Not after we...." He trailed off.

"I must," she replied. I could feel my own lips moving to her responses. She looked down into a puddle and I saw her reflection. She looked a bit like me if I were taller with a more womanly figure. "It is for the good of the people."

I heard the man take in a jagged breath as she opened the book on the altar.

"Please." The man sounded desperate. "There must be some other way."

"There is no other way," she said firmly.

As she started to read the foreign text in the book, a second man, taller and broader than the first, put his hand between her eyes and the words. She looked at him. There was something familiar about this one as well, something in his eyes.

"You have jeopardized our quest with your actions," the second man said. The deep bass of his voice caused me to shiver. "Performing the ritual now is no longer an option."

She glanced over to a shield hanging to her right. I saw her reflection again. It was the only thing that was ever perfectly clear.

"It is up to you now." It was as if she were speaking directly to me.

Her lips curled slightly right before I was blinded by a bright flash of green light. When I was able to see through her eyes again, the second man was unconscious against the cave wall and the first man was still pleading with her to stop whatever it was she was about to do.

"No!" he shouted. He was lying on the ground reaching up to her. "You must not say the prayer!"

I heard her chuckle as wind entered the cave rushing violently around them. Her hair whipped around her face and they could barely hear each other's words. As she read, the wind grew with more intensity and the green light from before began to surround her. She screamed in pain. The man crawled desperately across the floor to help her but it was too late. She was gone. The last image she saw was the man collapsed on the floor, his eyes filled with tears.