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The sound of a plate smashing into the door itself led Aiden to the conclusion that leaving it closed for the time being was a prudent course of action. “You shouldn’t have come back here, you wretch,” his father swore. “You’re nothing but trouble, and you’ll bring a curse down on this town!”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m leaving,” Pacian assured him. “I only wanted to drop in and say hello before you drink yourself to death.”

Pace burst through the door and slammed it behind him. A small crowd of people had gathered around to find out what all the commotion was. Nellise emerged from the crowd and beckoned Pacian to her side, where they talked in whispers for a time.

Aiden didn’t feel the need to eavesdrop, so he decided to head over to the inn and drown his sorrows, and speak with his friend about this eventful evening later. The Sleeping Bear was a creatively-titled inn that mostly catered to merchants and the occasional passing traveller; however, the roads had been practically deserted of late, leaving most of the rooms vacant. The fire in the hearth burned brightly and the food was good, which proved to be of some small comfort to Aiden as he headed inside for the evening.

Perhaps an hour later, after Aiden had morosely eaten half a roast chicken, Pacian slumped down in the chair next to him. The two friends exchanged a tired glance, saying nothing, for they didn’t need to speak to convey what they were feeling at that moment. They were both emotionally exhausted and needed nothing more than quiet company for the evening.

Nellise joined them at the fireplace a little while later, sitting next to Pacian in silence, while Sayana came over to sit on Aiden’s lap, something that managed to distract him from his troubles quite effectively.

“I see you two have become quite friendly,” Nellise remarked softly, a faint smile on her lips.

“Yes, it came as something of a surprise to me,” Aiden replied, with a grin he couldn’t suppress. “Do Akoran women act like this in public? Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

“I don’t know; I was very young when I left. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so I’m doing what I want tonight. If anyone’s offended, that’s not my problem. But you’re all acting strangely tonight for some reason,” Sayana remarked, causing a number of exchanged glances to be passed around.

“Sy has many fine qualities,” Aiden drawled a moment later, “but I think it’s her non sequiturs that I find really attractive.”

“Both of these young gentlemen have family issues,” Nellise said in reply to Sayana’s question.

“Yes, if it wasn’t for Nel’s advice,” Pacian added accusingly, “we would have had a quiet evening by the fireplace instead of horrible confrontations with certain people.”

“I stand by what I said,” Nellise responded, looking at each of them. “Yet it appears I have underestimated how deep the problems are, and it will take more than a night of talking to overcome them.”

“Maybe, but I’m never going to speak to my old man again after tonight, so I don’t see the problem being fixed, ever,” Pacian said bitterly.

“Never is a long time, Pace,” Nellise counseled. “See how you feel in a few years, okay?”

“You’re lucky to have parents at all,” Sayana pointedly remarked in a soft voice. “Treasure them while you can.”

Aiden suddenly felt awful and exchanged a pained glance with Pacian, who groaned as he stood up and stretched. “I’m so done with this,” he grumbled. “Tomorrow isn’t going to be any easier, so I’m going to bed. I’ll see you all out front, first thing.”

Aiden mumbled a quick goodnight as Pacian turned and sauntered off towards his room. “That was a powerful insight, Sy,” Nellise remarked as Pacian left the common room.

“Truth often is,” she answered wistfully. Sayana then stood up and took Aiden by the hand, easing him out of the chair and slowly leading him towards their own room.

“I guess we’re off to bed as well,” Aiden remarked, looking back over his shoulder to see Nellise, who seemed to be blushing as they walked away.

Despite her apparent eagerness, Sayana had something else in mind when they climbed into bed that evening. Sensing Aiden’s dour mood, she offered nothing more than her company for the night, and he offered her the same, giving her the comfort she silently sought.

Lying there in her arms, his mind dwelt on the events of the day for some time before he became sleepy. The last thing he remembered thinking was that if the dragon appeared in his dreams that night, he was going to give it a swift kick in the head before it ate him.

Chapter Seventeen

It was a typical winter’s morning in Coldstream when the five of them met outside: a strong wind assailed them from the southwest, and there was a thick layer of snow upon the ground. It was just before sunrise, with the sky only beginning to lighten, and everyone who didn’t need to be up and about was sensibly still in bed.

Their breath misted heavily in the frigid conditions, and Aiden smacked his gloved hands together, trying to generate some warmth. The heavy white winter cloaks they wore protected them from the worst of the bitter wind, but the real test would come when they moved out of the foothills and over the High Plains, a large expanse of empty land in the southern region of the kingdom that gradually became the Highmarch Mountains.

Colt seemed remarkably alert, considering the early start, eyeing Pacian and Aiden suspiciously as they checked their gear one last time.

“I hear tell from the innkeeper that something happened in town last night,” he remarked to nobody in particular. “Bit of a local disturbance, as it were, lots of shouting and such. I don’t suppose either of you two heard about it?”

Aiden shook his head after a moment of fake thought, and Pacian merely shrugged. “I spoke with a drunken man in town last night,” Nellise casually mentioned. “He had been creating quite a scene, as it happens, so perhaps that’s what the innkeeper meant?”

Colt looked her straight in the eye for a long moment, as if trying to determine if she was lying or not. “Yeah, that was probably it,” he grunted, hefting his greatsword over his shoulder.

Aiden caught her eye for a moment and noticed a quick wink in his direction. He had to give credit where it was due, for Nellise hadn’t actually lied about anything she’d said, and he silently thanked her for it.

“All right, let’s move out,” Colt ordered. “We’re supposed to meet up with Duncan and his group ten miles or so upstream, and he’ll lead us into enemy territory from there. Sally is relaying word on their patrol movements and fortifications to him, so we’ll have everything we need moving forward. When it comes time to do the job, Duncan and I will head in and take care of this. You lot only need to keep the door open for us, okay?

“I know that’s putting a lot on your shoulders, Sayana,” he added, “but that’s the truth of the situation. If at any time you don’t think you can help us get in there and take this bastard out, you let us know. We won’t think any less of you for it, you understand me?”

“I’m not defenseless,” she assured him. “If it comes to it, I’ll light the place on fire.”

“Excellent,” Colt grunted as he turned and started trudging up the road, the snow crunching underfoot as the rest of them fell into line behind him. The two miserably cold militiamen still on duty at the south gate gave them a terse farewell and returned to their vigil.

Just outside of town, they crossed the bridge over the river Coldstream, which was iced over at this time of year. There was no trail visible beyond this point, for there had been almost no trade between the Akoran tribal people and the town of Coldstream for months. Even before they closed their borders, the mountain folk hadn’t been known for their open, sociable nature.

Aiden had met several Akorans in his life and found them to be a hard, uncompromising people, accustomed to living in a place where life was short and brutal. His thoughts wandered to historical matters for an hour or so, but after stepping on a branch and causing Colt to whirl around, he decided to focus more on his surroundings.

The terrain was gradually ascending as they traveled, and signs of life such as trees, bushes and animals slowly disappeared into the thickening mist blanketing the landscape. Presently, a huge, dead tree loomed out of the fog. Its branches clawed at the sky, an ominous omen if ever there was one, watching over the land like an ancient guardian.

Colt signaled for them to stop beneath its empty boughs, then pursed his lips and whistled a lyrical bird call. They crouched in silence, expecting an answer from beyond the misty veil, yet there was only silence.

“This is where we were told to meet Duncan,” he whispered, glancing around cautiously. “He should have seen us coming and contacted us by now.”

“You sure you haven’t been sipping a little of your, ahem, holy water?” Pacian asked spitefully.

“Remind me to punch you in the face when we get out of here,” Colt whispered ominously.

“I’ll make a note of it in my journal,” Pacian quietly replied, with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “‘Dear diary, when we get back to town, Colt wants to express his manly affections for me through violence.’”

“Enough,” Aiden muttered, in no mood for their usual repartee. “Do we wait here, or find our own way forward?”

Everyone looked to Colt for an answer, but had to wait while the big ranger looked around for signs of any tracks, or indeed any indication that something unpleasant might have befallen Duncan.

“Something’s not right,” he muttered, glancing around in consternation. Aiden mimicked him, suddenly finding the cold, misty air oppressive. Their visibility was counted in yards, and anything could be hiding out there.

Colt drew his bow. A moment later, an arrow whistled past him to thud into the trunk of the dead tree.

“Ambush!” he roared, nocking an arrow and kneeling in the snow to aim at something nobody could see. They drew their weapons as more arrows flew past, and Aiden’s heart raced as no less than a dozen hulking silhouettes appeared from the mists around them, weapons ready, the roar of their battle cries echoing across the frigid landscape.

Colt loosed his arrow into their ranks before the charging Akorans closed the distance. Aiden spoke the command word to summon his force shield, and as it shimmered into existence, his mind analyzed the situation, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. He didn’t have time to think about it, however, as three warriors bore down on him with spears poised to strike.

Sayana let out a stifled scream and reflexively huddled towards the centre of the group, summoning a sheath of ghostly armor to protect herself. When the oncoming warriors saw this, one of them called “witch!”, doubling Sayana’s fear in an instant.

Pacian threw a pair of knives at one large figure, striking true yet barely slowing the man’s advance. Nellise whispered a prayer and began glowing with a nimbus of white light as she cranked out bolts from her crossbow. Shooting at close-quarters targets was precisely what it was designed to do, and she struck down one after another in quick succession.

Colt threw aside his longbow and drew his greatsword as the front line of Akorans closed in, managing to take a swing at his nearest enemy. After their furious charge, the Akorans began working together to defend their flanks and take advantage of any mistakes. They closed in around the group, preventing any escape. Aiden was fighting on a purely defensive level as the relentless attack pushed him back towards Colt’s position.

Colt swung his blade back and forth with all his strength, striking down first one warrior, then another, but they were replaced as quickly as they fell, showing no fear at the sight of their fallen comrades.

Nellise was eventually forced to discard the crossbow and whirled her quarterstaff around, keeping the enemy at bay as best she could. Their situation was looking worse with every passing moment, but it could be turned around in a heartbeat if they could break out of the circle of surrounding warriors.

It was at that moment that Sayana finally overcame her fear. She screamed the same war cry the Akorans had used and threw her shining vythiric axe at the largest of their foes, almost splitting the man in half. Drawing the weapon back to her hand with sorcery, she took her place in the defensive circle to hold back the rest.

Holding the axe in her left hand, she conjured flames from her extended right, enveloping the nearby warriors in fire. Sayana’s flames abruptly died, almost as soon as they’d begun, however, at the shouted words of a venerable man wearing a black bearskin robe, who stood beyond the ring of warriors. In one hand, he held a staff etched with many runes and sigils that glowed with an eldritch light.

“A shaman,” Sayana breathed, fear evident in her voice.

Although he appreciated her respect for the newcomer, Aiden had a different reaction to the scene before him. He realized the futility of their situation, and understood there was no escape from the ambush.

Nellise’s quarterstaff whirled and hit with precision, breaking limbs until she was struck with the butt of an axe and dropped to the ground, unconscious.

The last thing Aiden remembered was Sayana looking at him in despair, right before a thrown axe hurtled into his field of view to strike him right between the eyes. Then everything went black.

* * *

The darkness was replaced with the near-blinding light of midday, causing Aiden to squint against the sudden brilliance. His boots crunched over snow as he took a few tentative steps, looking down upon a scene from his worst nightmares.

He stood amidst a battle between armored men wearing the gold dragon tabard of the kingdom and others clad in hooded robes, with signs of steel armor hidden underneath their garb. The fallen from both sides of the battle littered the landscape, and the ringing of steel and the cries of the combatants were deafening.

One of the kingdom soldiers suddenly bumped into him, giving him a dirty look as he yelled in Aiden’s face to get back on the line or be tried for cowardice. Aiden looked down at his body and saw he was wearing the armor and uniform of an Aielund soldier. His mind raced, trying to remember how he had come to be in the middle of this fight.

Aiden knew what was coming, but he didn’t know how he knew, and he staggered around as if in a dream. The ground began to shake, the vibrations growing in intensity until the head of an armor creature appeared over the rise, revealing more of its body as it closed the distance. He knew what was coming.

It was easily over twelve feet in height, with shoulders eight feet across, and was completely encased in ornate armor. More followed, marching across the snow-covered land.

“You can’t win this!” Aiden shouted, knowing the outcome of this fight. “Run, for the love of God, run!”

If the soldiers heard him, they paid him no heed.

Aiden watched the ongoing battle, but knew it was a futile effort — the outcome was inevitable. After long minutes of bloodshed, the black warrior stood alone against the last of the bizarre metal monsters.

This one was different from the others, though — shorter by several feet and wielding a huge sword in one hand, the edge of the blade rippling with light.

The two came together in a savage dance. Aiden remembered where he had seen this — and he was right, it was a dream, yet he couldn’t understand why it felt so real.

A shadow grew over the battlefield as something immense obscured the sun. An enormous gold dragon was descending onto the battlefield, the breadth of its wings surpassing a hundred feet.

As expected, the dragon turned its great head to look directly at Aiden. It seemed as startled to see him as Aiden was to be witness to this entire scene. It spread its wings, and the air around it crackled and sparked with a build-up of power.

A flash of white light suddenly engulfed the battlefield. A blast of energy engulfed Aiden, who fully expected to die.

A stillness came over the field. Aiden slowly looked up to see a colossal hole carved out of the ground, easily fifty yards across and just as deep. It was almost a perfect hemisphere, and even went inside the bailey of the castle itself. The outer gate and part of its walls cleanly sheared off where the hemisphere met them.

Aiden, no longer appearing as a soldier in the army, slowly stood, looking at the devastation before him, and felt at peace. It was an odd feeling, considering what he had witnessed, but there it was, regardless.

The scene around him began to fade and turn a curious shade of purple. Then it was all swept away in a swirling sea of blue and violet light, a vista that appeared flat and featureless, yet seemed to stretch on to infinity at the same time.

Aiden could no longer see his body in the dimness, and felt as though he were floating in water. He simply drifted with the flow, pushed about by eddies and currents of the great ocean.

After an interminable amount of time, a shape began to form from the surrounding formlessness, a piece of rocky ground beneath his booted feet. Aiden touched down lightly upon the surface and watched as the fog of violet and blue slowly receded before him to reveal an immense creature.

Its great head lifted slowly and Aiden saw it was the dragon from his nightmare, manifest before him in all its terrifying size. But it wasn’t quite the same.

Its great wings had wasted away to mere skeletal frames, covered in aged and worn skin. The golden scales adorning its hide were lackluster, and the eye that was now looking down at Aiden from the great head was bleary and dull. Aiden felt no fear of this creature, and was instead filled with a sense of pity.

Welcome, Aiden, a powerful voice intoned, although the mouth of the dragon had not moved.

“Where … what is this place?” Aiden replied, his voice small in the vast emptiness around him.

You are standing on a small pocket of reality amidst the Aether, a dimension adjacent to what you know of as Aeos, your world. Do not be alarmed; you are quite safe.

“How can you talk without moving your mouth?”

My jaws are not capable of reproducing mortal speech patterns, the dragon replied patiently. I am communicating directly with your mind.

“I see,” Aiden said timidly, struggling to comprehend everything that was happening. The air seemed normal here, though perhaps a little stale. Although he appeared to be standing on solid ground, he felt lighter than air, as if he could float away at any moment.

He took a few steps, noting that the great eye of the dragon, only yards away, followed his every move. The dragon’s bulk took up most of the space on the small pocket of land, but there was a structure of some sort behind it.

Peering closer, Aiden could see that it was a castle gate and part of a stone wall, with crumbling edges that stopped just short of the edge of the ground. Chains were lashed across the front of the gate, which appeared to be locked tight.

Do not go too close to the edge, the dragon advised. It was quite an effort to catch you in the first place, and I do not want you to again fall into the Aether.

“Is that a castle I see behind you?” Aiden asked, trying to put all the pieces of this puzzle together.

Yes, I brought it with me, the dragon said cryptically. Pay no heed to such things for now; your needs are more pressing. What is the last thing you remember?

“I ... was on a battlefield, watching great iron monsters attacking Aielund soldiers at the Battle of Fort Highmarch,” Aiden breathed, his memory distant and difficult to fathom. “But I have dreamt of that over and over for years, and never before has this happened.”

He looked at the dragon, its expression cryptic and its eye locked upon him, but no answer was forthcoming. “I recall Sayana saying something to me, something about it not being a dream,” Aiden mused aloud, his memories slowly clearing. “In the vision, she screamed when you looked at her. Why? She had done nothing to you—”

He was cut off by the dragon’s voice and was startled by its reaction. They are not your dreams, Aiden. They are mine, it informed him, its voice betraying powerful emotions within. She was not invited.

“If they’re your dreams, how is it that I see them every few nights? What is going on?”

Time flows differently here, the dragon explained. Every time I sleep, I walk in my memories of that last battle and wonder with regret whether or not I made the right choices; and through our connection, you walk through the battle with me.

You would have had the defenders drop their weapons and run? This was a poor choice — there was no retreat from the fight. I doubt there was any way to avoid the outcome you witnessed.

“Connected? How are we connected?” Aiden asked, imploring the dragon for an answer.

The dragon shifted its weight slightly, and brought forth one of its great claws, clenched tight around an object. Aiden took an involuntary step backwards, but the claw stopped before it reached him. It slowly opened, and within its palm was a glass orb, ridiculously small for the dragon to be holding, but about the right size for a human.

You recognize this, the dragon stated, observing Aiden’s reaction. It is the result of unequalled artifice, beyond the talents of even my own kind. They came in pairs, and allowed for communication across any distance, even across time.