First Dream

We had a few hours before start. Plan was to infiltrate the Royal Castle’s dungeons from behind, through a net of tunnels build in the days when the snake people and their blood elf allies still ruled most of this land, after drive away the ice elves. The dwarves carved stronghold citadels for themselves back them. Some of those are still intact, magically isolated by different reason in different periods. Before she die, Verenice’s mother had recovered much information about those tunnels bellow the city, that not serves as Capital City for our human nation.

Plan was far from satisfactory, but was better than the infiltration from above that Sheva had in mind. Her false Red Armour could even work to get in, if no actual red guard looked her a second time. Fight a way out would be considerably more difficult.

This way we had a chance to go in, rescue Elizabeth, and carry her out. Ideally, without alert anyone.

Even if the alert was given, we would still have a chance to escape. Because Verenice was actually alive during those times, before the Demon Wars. She had memory of how the hidden doors build by those ancient dwarves used to work. How blood elves did their magic during that period. What traps to expect and how to avoid them. With that our movement through those tunnels should be much faster than the advance of any guards hunting us. No matter how powerful those guards happened to be.

We still needed to move through the actual tunnels on the upper level, build more recently by dwarves and appropriated by the human founders of the city that now exists. There are level of deposits and abandoned tunnels too far down below the surface for humans to consider them practical.

The passage between that part of the underground know by the Royal Guard and the prison cells still in use would be protected by powerful spells. We had to pass through those spells without attract any attention.

Once that had being done, we had good notion about where Ellizabeth should be.

Go back to the same way. Once in the forgotten tunnels many option would be available to leave Capital City and reemerge in the countryside.

From that moment on, we would need to leave the country. Plans for that had being made too.

Series of distractions had been orchestrated in the surface and in the upper levels of the prison. False alarms would hopefully hide our mistakes if we didn’t managed to pass the barrier without force our way through it. The political temperature was high enough to make that relatively easy.

I came to bed in this safe-house next to the entrance of the tunnel we would use to access the sewers. First part of out way to reach the forgotten roots of this nation.

My plan was to meditate for half an hour. Instead, I felt sleep.

Something that had not happened to me in a very long time. When it happened during early stages of training, or at the worse times of the disease, I remembered no dreams after. Or just confuse feeling mixed between disconnected images. This time, was like being there.

I was in one apartment where I used to live on Earth, when I was in my thirties. I recognized the place, but it was not my apartment anymore. Different furniture, other decoration. Different floor. Place seemed abandoned, thick layer of dust covering everything, windows broken. Smelling like fungus and mould, which also was visible on the walls and about everywhere.

Without thinking I raised from the sofa and realized I was again in my old body. Not the body I had on Earth when I was 30, but the one I had when I died. Old, weakening due to the bacterial infection in my lungs and digestive system.

I felt angry and revolted for being back. Then, immensely sad.

I walked to look the world outside. It seemed a ghost town. There was signs of fire in the distance, plants growing in the middle of the road.

As I was looking, all colour was taken away, this place became grey and darker and at the corner of my peripheral vision I saw those black tentacles that almost killed the price. Now king of our nation.

Then I saw the shape of a man sitting on the diner table in the middle of the room. It was so bright that was painful to look directly in his direction. On the same time, the light coming from him didn’t seem to illuminate much around us. As if the room itself refused to be illuminated by this intruder.

“Welcome! Is good to finally talk to you”

“Who, are you? Why are we here?”

“I am God. We are her to have our first conversation”

“God! You mean “the” God? As in ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, God?”

“Nah, no. Not that guy. Albeit, you made me curious with that question. Would make any difference to you if I was?”

“Not particularly. It is just a very, culturally charged expression. “I am God!!” sane people do not speak like that. No offense.”

“No offense taken. I understand your confusion, but I am not about to start lying to people just to avoid this particular misunderstanding. If nothing else, because conversation do not improve from here, not very fast anyway. You will see the importance of not start our relationship with a lie, eventually.

I have been watching you”

“So, have you? I suppose you don’t claim to be all powerful and omniscient, infinitely good, and etc”

“The ‘etc’ I am not sure about! Really depends on what you put in it. As for the rest, no. Nothing like that. If you need a metaphor to help you understand, let’s say I am someone who looks your life, and both the Universes you have experienced, as a player looks the worlds in a videogame. Someone who has the luxury to look your life from outside, with privileged information about what is at stake, but very limited means to affect anything directly.”

“You caused my death on Earth. My reincarnation on this world.”

“No and no. A bacteria cultivated over time in the hospitals of Earth caused your death, and the death of many others. Your reincarnation in this world as an ‘Evil Demon’, as they call it here, is a collateral effect of a spell.

The magic ritual made in the planet of origin of those invaders to allow their massive migration from the place where they were to the universe where you live now.

That migration was the origin of the Demon Wars, mind you.

Ever since that mass migration random people like you find themselves in a similar situation. Born here in this planet, with complete memory of their past live on another universe. Capable to use magic without incantations, and with a reserve of mana that grows without limit. Exceptional things compared to how magic usually works in this universe.

Both things are accidents, product of blind luck. You being here, and your planet being hit by a bacteria resistant to any treatment.

The fact that you are now caring a magical curse that is made of the same arcane element at the core of that disease that killed you is the third accident in this series of unlikely happenstances. Not the interaction between those 3 independent accidents could be the key to something meaningful for you.”

“What interaction are you talking about??”

“The answer for that question you can only find after you learn more about reincarnation. To learn that you need to go back to the last ruin your father explored in the Demon continent. However, if you go there too soon you will die before you can learn anything. First, you need to accept the invitation of the gnome woman.”

“Why don’t you tell me clearly what you want, then?”

“I want to see something interesting. I only pay attention in your life because I have no better distraction! You have been an entertaining fellow, …so far. Would be frustrating to see you die in a few hours when you have not even figured out how to get back your spellcasting capacity! There is so much you can do with the potential you have here.”

“Yes?”

“This thing inside your, for instance. Do you really think it has to be a curse? Have you considered any alternative instead of try to cut it out? Clearly, think this from the perspective of a healer isn’t providing you enough solutions.”

“I is a curse! This thing was shaped to kill the target”

“Yeah, but the target was not you! It was supposed to kill its host in hours, couple days, certainly not one week! It has been stuck inside you for as long as you have being stuck with it. That was not the plan of those who created the spell. Much less the plan of that fellow who used the spell to kill a King and his heir.”

“You mentioned that you are only talking with me right now because I am about to kill myself and you don’t want me to die yet. Let’s say I believed you. For the sake of discussion, I don’t want me to die yet either. How we prevent that?”

“ Practical thinking! I like that. We should have started with that. Little time left.”

“And?”

“Ask for Sugar Bunny ”

That was the last thing I heard, already half awaken.