What The Night Hides

Chapter Three

Ignoring my first glimpse of icy sunlight, I cracked open my eyes and found myself on the floor of the room that I'd paid for. Dimly, I remembered dragging myself up the stairs through The Cataclysm, but little else. I wasn't sure why I'd pulled the mattress off the bed, or why I'd stuffed both pillows in the window. I'd even wrapped my cloak along the length of my sword—like I'd been trying to hide it—despite stacking my armor neatly against the wall. That pile was the only part of the room that was orderly at all.

"Shit," was my groggy way of saying what the fuck at five in the morning. It was what my tongue could manage, anyway, with the taste of blood still thick in my throat. 

Powering through the growing weakness in my legs and the hollow pit of twisting pain in my lower gut, I rolled over on the floor, the corners of my mouth sticking to the edge of the cracked and moldy mattress. Idly, I pulled at a splinter I noticed in the side of my hand, the point gouged in about a third of an inch.

Sadly, the night's events hadn't softened with the morning's gentle glow, even as the bedsheet I'd pinned over the broken shutters cast my room in orange and yellow. I could still see the ruin all around me, in the scratches on the wall and in the scattered drops of blood on the floor. I'd probably have to pay to get those removed.

Worse, though, was the promise of breakfast, the horror of it hanging over me like the weight of a crumbling tunnel ceiling. I hugged my stomach, already sick from the imaginary smell of food and salt and spices. I didn't want to eat or talk or drink or breathe. I wanted to shove my head into a pail of water and let the shock of the chill dull the aching in my head.

Not that it mattered, of course—what I wanted seldom did. Might as well wish I could do the night over again, I told myself. Sighing, I tied back my hair in a long, black braid, leaving the escaped wisps to frame my face. The past was the past; now, I could only choose to go back on my word or honour it.

So, would I face the strangers? Or face the strangers? There wasn't really much of a choice there.

With a groan—one I did little to muffle or stifle—I staggered to my feet. I was steady, which was promising, but taking stock of the room made me gag. So I got dressed quickly, strapped my dagger back on my leg, left my sword, and slipped quietly out into the hallway.

The inn was as quiet as I'd left it the night before, but in all truth, I'd crept back to my room around three in the morning; hardly a handful of hours had passed since then. I had sensed another guest on my floor, but they were gone now, the rooms next to mine empty of both dreams and thought. I widened the range of my sensory spell, and below me I sensed the party of five. I counted twice to be cautious, then again, just to be sure. Two members of the group were awake and one was pacing, but I couldn't guess who they were.

On a lark, I chose one of the sleeping adventurers at random and burrowed into their dreams. What would've been easier with either closeness and contact was made harder without both, but I forged ahead anyway. I was curious, tired, and weary, with nothing to lose.

Still, the stranger's dream, like most dreams, was a fragmented one. Mostly shaped by sounds and colour, there was a feeling here or there, and sometimes an abstract face. But then, as the vision gained its footings, I saw a shoreline broken by weathered grey rocks, a small house beaten down by the wind, and heard the echo of a wind-chime. I was standing on a snow-lined path, tracing the edges of a horizon snatched from the early days of a winter that ever aged. It was only a brief moment before all the details faded away.

Pulling back on my flow of magic, I took a ragged breath and continued down the stairs. I wasn't silent—I couldn't have been; not on these rickety old steps—but I was quiet. I'd made sure of that. So I should've heard a door open long before I heard someone's faint drawing of breath.