Chapter 45: Dreams! II
Damian did not even know when he fell asleep.
But he instantly knew when he was dreaming.
The heaviness of his body faded away as he felt light, weightless, as if the stone beneath him had dissolved into mist. The aches and exhaustion that had pressed upon him vanished, replaced by sothing else entirely.
He instantly knew he was dreaming because he found himself in a room shining silver and gold and wood.
Not just any room.
His room!
The chamber of a Young Lugal in the Vakochev Empire.
The walls were ford from massive stone blocks fitted together so precisely that no seam was visible, their surfaces polished to a sheen that reflected the light of oil lamps burning in carved alcoves.
Those lamps were held by fixtures of hamred copper shaped like serpents coiling upward, their open mouths cradling flas that never seed to flicker.
The floor was covered with furs of Primal Beasts, pelts that held faint luminescence even in death, their colors ranging from deepest midnight blue to the silver-white of mountain snow. They were soft beneath his feet, softer than anything the Vassal Tribes could ever hope to possess.
His bed was a platform of carved stone raised three steps above the floor, its surface covered with layers of treated hide and woven cloth dyed in the purple and gold of the Vakochev bloodline. The fra was inlaid with bone from great beasts, forming patterns that told the story of his ancestors, their conquests, their glory.
Paintings hung from the walls, woven from plant fibers so fine they seed like captured clouds. They depicted scenes of Vakochev history: the founding of the empire, the claiming of the seven mountains, the great battles that had established their dominance over this region of the Lands of Stone.
A weapons rack stood against one wall, holding practice weapons sized for a child. Stone axes with padded edges. Wooden spears with blunted tips. A small shield of layered hide reinforced with bone plates.
And everywhere, everywhere, were signs of wealth and power.
Crystal formations that pulsed with stored Mana. Jewelry of polished stone and hamred tal. Containers of carved bone holding redies and salves that most tribes would never see in their entire existence.
All the things Damian saw were from a different life entirely.
Even if they gave him fond mories.
Even if they made his heart ache with longing for what he had lost.
At this ti, his body seed to be hunched over on the bed. He was small. Young. Perhaps nine or ten sumrs old. And he was trembling.
He rembered this.
This was a mory!
He was dreaming a mory?!
DUM!
His heart began to beat faster as he panicked because in the next mont...
"My Little Lugal, did you co up here to sulk again after training with your father?"
...!
That voice!
His mother’s voice echoed out from behind him, warm and gentle and filled with the love that had defined his childhood.
Damian trembled.
His body in this dream mory turned of its own accord, following the script that had been written years ago. And he threw himself into the embrace of the woman behind him.
"Ama!"
He could not help but cry out, but this was also what he had done back then, in this mory. The word that ant mother, the word that he had whispered and shouted and sobbed countless tis in the years since her death.
His voice erged without his control, speaking words that his younger self had spoken long ago.
"Ama, why must I do this every day? It is so exhausting!"
The complaint of a child who did not understand.
"I do not have a Land and Sky Physique like the others! My training is dood from the start! All I get are beatings!"
The frustration of a boy who felt himself lesser.
"Why... must I do this, Ama?"
The question of soone who did not yet know that training would be the least of his worries. That beatings in practice would be nothing compared to the horrors waiting in his future.
...!
Damian felt the embrace of this woman.
The embrace of his mother.
Her arms wrapped around him with the gentle strength of soone who would protect him from anything, everything, the entire cruel world if she could. Her warmth seeped into his small body, chasing away the frustration and the self-pity and the doubt.
She slled of the flowers that grew near the imperial gardens, of the oils she used to treat her hair, of sothing indefinable that was simply her. Simply Ama. Simply the center of his universe when he was small and the world was too big to understand!
He had never had a vivid dream like this before.
He had never experienced a mory this clearly.
Every detail was perfect. The texture of her clothing against his cheek. The sound of her breathing. The way her hand moved to stroke his hair with absent affection.
He could not help but tremble and cry as he was held by his Ama again.
Eight years.
Eight years since he had felt this.
Eight years since he had been held like this, loved like this, safe like this.
When he looked up at her, he could see everything he rembered and more.
Her vibrant dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, braided with small beads of polished stone that clicked softly when she moved. She wore a light blue dress of woven cloth so fine it seed to flow like water, secured at her waist with a belt of hamred copper links. A pendant hung at her neck, a crystal that pulsed with faint Mana, a gift from his father on their bonding day.
Her face was beautiful and she held the kind eyes that held depths of wisdom and warmth. A gentle smile that always made him feel like everything would be okay, no matter how bad things seed.
Her soft hands held his cheeks, thumbs wiping away the tears he had not realized he was shedding!
And she smiled.
That smile that had gotten him through every hard day of training, every failure, every mont when he felt like he was not good enough to be a Vakochev.
She replied to him with the patience she had always shown.
"Because you have to be strong, my Little Lugal."
Her voice was gentle but firm.
"In the Lands of Stone, strength decides everything. And my baby..."
Her smile flickered with sothing that might have been worry.
"I will fear for you if you are not strong. So do not make your Ama fear, okay?"
She pulled him closer, pressing her lips to his forehead.
"Do not worry about Land and Sky Physiques. They are not everything."
Her hands found his again, squeezing gently.
"Worry about yourself. Your character. Your standing. And your safety."
Her eyes t his, and there was sothing in them that his younger self had not understood. A fear. A knowledge. A mother’s intuition that dark tis were coming.
"Can you do that for your Ama?"
...!
She said such words as he could not help but hug her tighter.
"Yes, Ama."
He wanted to hold her close because he felt like he had not done it enough.
When his mother was gone, that was it.
He never saw her again.
He never felt her warmth again.
He missed her so much!
"Ama..."
He got out of her embrace to tell her all this. To warn her. To beg her to run, to hide, to do sothing, anything to survive what was coming.
But at that mont, that was when everything changed.
When the color drained from his eyes.
When his mother’s face began to change.
When the dream beca a nightmare.
Her eyes bled.
Crimson rivers of blood poured from her eye sockets, streaking down her cheeks like tears of death. Her mouth opened in a scream that had no sound, stretched wider than any human mouth should stretch, a rictus of agony and terror.
"AMA?!"
Damian reached for her, but gushing rivers of blood erupted from her body. From her eyes. From her mouth. From wounds that opened across her flesh without cause.
The blood bathed him, hot and thick and slling of copper and death. It pushed him backward with physical force, driving him away from her no matter how hard he tried to reach her.
Everything around him began burning!
Oh!
BOOM!
The paintings caught fire, the stories of his ancestors consud by hungry flas. The furs on the floor ignited, sending acrid smoke billowing upward. The walls themselves seed to glow with heat, the fitted stones cracking from the intensity!
And his Ama...
She floated in the center of the conflagration, her body limp and broken, blood still pouring from wounds that covered her from head to toe. Her beautiful dark hair was matted with crimson. Her light blue dress was soaked through, clinging to a form that no longer held life.
She looked like a corpse.
She looked like what he had always imagined she looked like after they killed her.
"AMA! AMA! AMA!"
Damian roared, reaching for her with hands that could not touch her. His fingers passed through smoke and fla and nothing, grasping at air while his mother’s body hung before him like an accusation.
Why did you leave ?
Why did you not save ?
Why were you not strong enough?!
The questions he had asked himself every night for eight years echoed through the burning room.
But no matter what he did, he could not reach her.
He could not reach her!
"AMA!"
...!
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