[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]
'What…?'
A strange voice spoke in his mind. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Where had he heard it before? No, he must be dreaming. His memory felt pinched, strangely amiss of his last moments. Denial, and the urge to lose himself was stronger.
When he opened his eyes he found nothing but complete darkness. At least he thought he opened his eyes. He couldn't see his hands or feet yet he felt himself small and compressed as if he were locked away in some sort of box.
This darkness was simple yet it could be felt.
It was suffocating.
'Where am I…?'
As if in answer, something flickered in the distance.
He turned, and saw a small dying star, its light flickering like a candle burning out.
Odd. It wasn't there before, but it seemed to be the only way out. Well, the only possible route to anywhere.
But was he looking at it up or down? To his left? No. Right?
Hope hesitated, but then willed himself to reach out with whatever ghost limbs he had, expecting to pull back some cosmic curtain or to be introduced to some chthonic god on the other side.
The white light burst forward, engulfing his vision. There was a strong gravitational pull on his body, his limbs helpless against the force as he was sucked into a gaping maw of light. It should be the other way around. Usually, it was the void that swallowed him.
And instead of being thrown into the bowels of fiendish dreams, he was thrusted into a new world.
A world different from his own.
A wasteland full of ancient ruins.
He'd almost mistaken it for his world, how ugly and gray it was.
He tried pinching himself. Ah, but he still didn't have a body. Yet. Hopefully. Maybe it was a dream, and he was seeing it omnisciently. And although he didn't have a body, a phantom pain caressed his head. Was he knocked out so hard that this weird dream occurred because of it?
He was buoyant between the sky and the ground, viewing a wasteland that was ashen and barren of life. He looked directly below himself and saw a tall ruined cathedral in which its spires stretched and pulled till they were thin peaks. Although parts of the roof were caved in and it seemed far from its original appearance, it sat majestically in the middle of a village.
Or what was left of a village.
All the other buildings were blackened with soot. Coated from distant ash stuck to their walls, doors, archways, and streets. Tumbled stones where houses once stood were scattered, and what remained tottered like old hovelled men. But amidst the ruin, there were strange silver claw marks dragged all over the site. As if some caged animal had been set loose for a wild hunt.
It was as if the devil himself flipped this land and turned it into his own backyard.
Even in his Quadrant, there were plenty of sites like this ruin.
Residues of bombed cities and plains paralleled. His world of course had a much more modern touch. This, however, was archaic, and detailed that his mind was incapable of creating such complexity.
He wouldn't consider his mind to be an imaginative one.
'How strange.'
Hope paused and observed what at first looked like dull white specks littering the ground. No. Bones. Skulls planted here and there with cracked open jaws toward the sky, lost cries to their god to save them. Clearly, their dying wishes were all for naught.
"…"
'I'm dreaming. Just dreaming…but isn't this a little vivid for a dream?'
Sometimes dreams were so real that even he struggled to differentiate nightmare from reality. But there would always be that small sense of detachment to separate what was real and what was not.
He didn't have that same feeling here.
That thread of reality. To escape.
Suddenly, the world shifted, and the ash across the ruins had begun to ascend.
He watched the cinders rain toward the sky, the clouds shifting from east to west. Slowly at first, then they scudded towards the horizon, stretching an endless blanket of itself from one end to the other. The sun hidden behind its layers shone the sky like one giant pulse. Day and night passing. A couple beats per second, then a thousand like gunfire spewing blinding flashes forced his gaze down where the rest of the world was reversing.
Stones rebuilt themselves into their original stories. Streets cleared from heaps of ash. Skulls started to roll and bounce toward their counterparts, building upon joints and ribs. They all ignited in one instance, but in the next were restored with flesh.
Time slowed as the fires roared back to life, blooming through windows and corners of the streets when finally night took place in the sky.
Then screams pierced the air.
That was when he realized, time resumed back to its usual pace.
"Ahhhh!"
"Knights save us!"
"Forgive me, forgive me! Please. Sanctuary!"
"…"
'Oh. Did I…die?' He didn't expect it this soon. 'The hell?'
Ironically, it really looked like hell. He had heard tales of the 'inferno' containing writhing bodies and gnashing of teeth. Luckily, he was not an active part of it.
He found himself standing on a balcony of the once ruined cathedral. He was peering from a distance at the desperate townsfolk clambering over each other to escape the hungry flames. From afar, it looked like molded bodies in a disturbing pile of linked limbs.
And the smell of burnt flesh and smoke started to clog his throat—
Reeling, he covered his mouth with his sleeve and froze; smooth fabric was brushing his skin. Not rough, not dirty, but soft.
He looked down at his sleeves that were now loose and black. In fact, his whole outfit was a long priest garment in black with gray buttons sewn down his chest, the collar clasped tight. He even had a short, elbow-length cape attached to his shoulders like night wings. But the lining was what startled him. Under the wings was a stark color of rich blue that was so pure, so deep, so rich, it screamed like how blood screamed on snow. Richer than any clear sky he'd ever seen.
Would one wear such attire when they wake up in hell?
Hope stared at his appearance; it fit him like a glove. He had to admit that the outfit wasn't so bad.
"Well, you can never go wrong with the color black—"
"Priest!"
Hope flinched, turning away from the balcony. The call came from just on the other side of the door inside. Hope subconsciously reached for his gun. Empty. Ah, the only time when reflexes make him a fool.
Of course it wasn't there. This wasn't the waking world.
'Wait…' Hope frowned at that thought.
A rush of heavy footsteps stormed down the hall like the beat of battle drums. The door burst open. There appeared a young knight in chainmail armor with a blue tunic and a long cape draped over him. His blonde hair was damp and disheveled in all angles with sweat sticking to its ends as he looked hurriedly around. He seemed to be about Hope's age of sixteen. Or eighteen? Slightly taller which Hope measured vaguely with his hand. He'd say half a head taller.
The movement signaled the knight to look over and their eyes finally met.
"Priest, please get away from the balcony!"
Hope raised his hands. "Hold on-"
The knight dashed forward and yanked him back inside. A surprisingly sharp pang shot through his arm. What a damn grip. That felt more real than he'd expected.
"We have to leave! Hurry!"
"Leave?" Leave where? Out there in that inferno? He must be mad.
Hope watched with a blank expression as the knight rushed over to a far cornered table where maps and scrolls were sprawled out. How interesting. Maybe he should've explored more, and that heart symbol certainly looked uncanny.
It was only a glimpse of what seemed to be tunnels or sewage lines, with marked symbols and scrawled notes around the edges. But the knight crumpled it all up. Threw them in a fireplace along with a bunch of other scrolls from the shelves. It was so frantic that ink splattered on the floor like black blood.
"…"
'Seems important. But then again, there are people burning just outside, so is that a priority…?'
Hope sighed and crossed his arms as he leaned against a wall.
He closed his eyes to recollect his thoughts.
'So an inferno. Possibly a mob attack. Possibility of being tortured and captured. Right. A dream. A stupid dream. But the worst kind.'
Hope wasn't sure when the last time he had a dream like this. Mm. No he did. It was precisely two nights ago when he slept in the bunker with 012's stinky feet in his face. Yes, he dreamt of an apocalypse then.
There were times when he'd close his eyes and in a blink four hours passed. When he did dream, they were mostly nightmares. A humorous variety from being buried, chased, attacked, etc. His situation now seemed to fit the list of a normal nightmare.
Although strangely he was a priest. Not a soldier or a regular civilian but part of some religious faction. He wouldn't consider himself pious.
"Uwaaaack!"
"A-aaaaaah!"
"P-please help us!"
Ear-splitting screams interrupted his flow of thoughts. He glanced back at the scenery and frowned when he saw people running with flames caught in their hair and garments down the streets. Some clawed at their faces as their skin was being incinerated. Others rolled on the ground more helpless than ever in the sea of fire; their bodies charred from pink, to red, to black.
Too vivid.
'How strange.'
Hope tapped his fingers nonchalantly on his arm.
'What to do, what to do, to wake up from a dream…'
He paused.
'Ah.'
In the meantime, the knight burned the last of the unknown scrolls into the fireplace and wiped his sweaty brow. He smiled like a boy who completed a chore at the nick of time.
"If we head to the back corridor now, we might be able to escape by the river. Hopefully by then we can either sail across or—"
The knight looked back to Hope…who was perching on the balcony's ledge.
"PRIEST?!"