Shattering Dreamscape #2
Now what? she wonders, watching as the small pinpoint of brightness gradually blooms under the water.
The light drifts upward, floating out of the river like a dripping shooting star.
But if it is a star, it has lost all its luster.
The colors are wrong. Sagging and dull. It is not the sort of light that dazzles and delights, but rather a pale and sickly shade that makes her feel nauseous.
The light drifts toward the bank, floats across the meadow with languid ease, and wanders toward them.
The beast of a man steps more between Euphemia and the light, raising his sword at it.
“What is that?” she asks, breathless.
His skull jerks over his shoulder. “Do you know so little of what means you harm?”
Euphemia folds her arms and mutters to herself, “At least I know my name.”
Though this close, her words reach him and his shoulders tense. He turns back toward the floating orb and she curses her brash tongue. Here he is, seemingly defending her, while she’s busy offending him. Brilliant.
With a sharp inhale, Euphemia summons a half-hearted apology. But he’s already moved past it, protectively nudging her farther behind him and out of the light’s path as it approaches.
“That—” he answers, “is a soul.”
The word ripples through her like something holy.
A soul.
Desperate to observe such a thing, she grabs his arm and pulls herself around him.
After all, Euphemia has never seen a soul before.
Oh, but she has heard about them plenty.
It seems every sermon they discuss them—the ways a soul can be devout or damned, how they are judged in death, some granted access to Heaven while others face eternal punishment in Hell.
She’s reminded again of what the beast of a man called this place earlier.
Hell-heim.
Everything is starting to make a certain kind of morose sense. Of course she would dream about her own damnation, this place where she is trapped with her nightmare, her guilt, and…whatever he is.
The beast of a man and Euphemia watch in silence as the sickly light drifts across the meadow and into the mist.
As it does, the dim glow illuminates the fog. It begins to fade, engulfed by the dense cloud of grey. But she watches as it emerges on the other side, the glow brightening once more and illuminating a structure that had not been there before.
By silhouette alone, Euphemia might have called it a castle.
But it is not stone that fortifies those walls.
It is something porous.
Something stained with age.
Squinting, Euphemia steps closer, oblivious to the fact that her skulled companion is stepping backward.
Her gaze drifts up the ivory spires that stretch into the sky like teeth—some sharpened to a perfect point, others serrated and splintered.
Shattered shells of pinnacles and battlements rise higher than any castle she’s ever seen or heard of.
When her eyes fall back down, she notices a doorway below it all.
The soul drifts across the threshold and disappears somewhere beyond.
But its glow lingers in the doorway. Pulsing. Shifting from the color of rotten leaves to the magenta sky above them.
Something tugs at Euphemia, calling her forward.
Not a voice.
Not a hand.
Something stronger.
She makes it two steps before a grip, solid and firm, wraps around her arm and yanks her backward.
“Do you have a death wish?” the beast of a man snarls, and she could be mistaken, but she swears there is a hint of fear edging his words.
“Of course I don’t,” she snaps, jerking her arm out of his grasp with gusto, even if gratitude fills her chest.
“Then turn around and forget you ever saw such a place.”
She stares up at the ominous castle of bone again. “Why? What’s in there?”
“Nothing survivable.” His gaze drifts there too, and he takes a rough breath. “One does not enter Nástrond of their own free will and live to tell the tale.”
Euphemia swallows.
With the soul gone, the fog closes in on itself again. The castle disappears beyond it.
Euphemia can’t stop thinking about that glowing doorway, nor the soul that entered into its domain.
Who had it belonged to? A friend? A lover?
A father?
For the first time since arriving, she starts to wonder if there might be some truth to this place—or rather, she hopes there could. She hopes that perhaps it isn’t only a dream, but something else. Something more. A place wedged between delusion and possibility.
Because if one soul is here, there might be others.
He might be here, waiting for her somewhere.
Then Euphemia could finally say she’s sorry.
As she stares after the fading castle thinking about the impossible, the beast of a man watches the fog drifting nearer. His hand tightens around the hilt of his sword; the other closes around her wrist before dragging her away.
Euphemia goes willingly, for there is a fear in him whenever he looks into the fog that she does not wish to understand.
She falls in line behind him, feet shuffling across the meadow with no apparent destination in mind.
The farther he gets though, the more his gait hastens. His shoulders tense. The sword rises at the ready. He looks as though he’s hunting something—or perhaps preparing for something to hunt him.
What was it he had called her before? A draugr?
Rather than being ambushed by the unknown, Euphemia hastens after him and calls, “What are we running from—”
At the sound of her voice, he whirls on her, sword aimed at her throat. “Back away, you wretched creature.”
Terror has returned to him. It quakes in his voice, trembles through his hand, and makes the fire in his eyes burn bright.
For a moment, all Euphemia does is stand there, aghast. She almost doesn’t believe it. Surely, he must be pretending. But again, it would serve no purpose.
Deciding she doesn’t have time for childish games, Euphemia shoves the sword aside and shrieks. “What is going on here? Put that away. We’ve already been through this.”
The flames inside his skull dim with something that could be confusion.
Curious. Euphemia isn’t sure if she says it aloud or not, but she thinks it all the same.
There is no resistance from him as she reaches for the sword and slowly redirects it from her.
“I am no creature.” She regards him with new pity. “Don’t you remember?”
She recalls then that there had been no recognition when he first saw her, either. Even though she had remembered him—down to the exact moment he would appear and the precise words he would say—he had given no indication that he had remembered her.
His skull inclines as if he wants to remember but cannot.
“I told you my name,” she says, and tries to jostle the memory free. “Euphemia.”
He utters the name slowly, tasting every letter. “Euphemia…”
The skull of his face is unmoving, silence lingering. But beyond it, she can sense the hurricane of emotions spiraling through him.
Euphemia doesn’t dare interrupt his silence.
She doesn’t know how this memory loss of his works or what might set it off again.
At long last, he says with greater certainty, “Euphemia. I remember you. The helhest was drawn to you.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Sighs. “Yes, well, I am quite liked by their kind, I suppose.”
Already the tension in his shoulders is easing. The grip on his sword lessens.
But there is an uneasiness between them now.
A question lingering.
“Does that happen often?” she asks. “You forgetting people?”
“People?” he chuckles. “What people?” The beast of a man runs a hand over the smooth surface of bone atop his head, startling at its touch as if he had expected to find hair.
When he pulls his hand back in front of his face, he glares at it before closing it into a fist. “There are no people here. Only the dead. The spirits. The helhest. The draugr. Me.” His eyes flick up to meet hers, two simmering coals of heat and pain. “That is, until I found you.”
What does he mean dead?
Certainly, she’s not dead. She can’t be. Euphemia is only nineteen years of age. She’s only just recently married. She has her whole life ahead of her.
Only a dream, she remembers.
But this is officially the strangest dream she’s ever had. Talk of the dead. Strange creatures. A man who looks more beast than human. She does not know what to make of any of it.
“But you are not dead?” This he says with less conviction, a tremor in his throat suggesting he fears her answer.
It makes her wonder what horrors he has witnessed here. Which ones lurk in the fog.
“As far as I know, I am still very much alive.”
He gives her a brisk nod. Then shakes his head. Nods again. A war is brewing inside that thick and unnatural skull of his, one that Euphemia is not privy to and does not dare ask about.
“Euphemia,” he says again, as if he’s trying to sear her name into memory.
Jealous that he has that much of hers to hold onto when she has nothing of his, she decides to ask again, “And what is your name?”
“If I have a name, I no longer—”
Before he can finish, Euphemia rolls her eyes. “You do not recall it. Understood.” With a sigh, she folds her arms and tuts. “What do I call you then? I can’t very well go around calling you—”
She nearly slaps a hand over her own mouth. Good Heavens, what is wrong with her? She can’t very well tell him she’s been referring to him as a beast of a man.
Euphemia wishes she could see his face to read whatever expression might be there now. Without it, she has no indication of what is going on inside that thick skull, other than the simmering flames of his eyes.
“I am open to suggestions, Euphemia.”
Her name spoken through the brimstone of his voice makes it difficult to think. And he keeps saying it. Over and over. Like the Devil calling out to her from his fiery pits in Hell.
If he is the figure who has been stalking her, perhaps this is what he wanted all along? First her name, then more.
Or perhaps it’s nothing nefarious at all. Perhaps this beast of a man is not trying to call to her; he’s merely trying to remember. To find something to cling to when the memories fade again. To keep himself grounded.