𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 & 𝒔𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒊𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒖𝒔 ・ ᴀᴄᴄᴇᴘᴛɪɴɢ
@lifebinds's emet-selch sent : [Dreams] - our muses occasionally share dreams. It happens randomly, only once every couple of months (or years).
The world ablaze. Buildings crumbling. Dead and dying in their homes, in the streets, fleeing. Terrified screams, helpless sobs, desperate pleas for succor. Monsters around every corner.
It's a familiar scene—one she's revisited in her dreams for as long as she can remember—yet time and frequency have done naught to numb her to its potency. In one moment she's a child hiding under floorboards. In another, she's running through the streets, unheard, unseen, unable to fight, unable to help. A ghost. An echo.
Fear and adrenaline push her forward.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registers that something isn't quite right. The streets look like the cobbled streets of Monzen but they don't; the stone is too smooth, cut too cleanly. She sees Doma castle in the distance, but at the same time it's a building taller than she's ever seen before. It's different, but not unfamiliar. The scenes overlap, Doma and this otherworldly metropolis, but the horror and grief are the same.
She can sense the monster on her heels before she turns to face it. When a young man stumbles in front of her, she pivots on her heel, dark robe whipping around her feet as she tosses the red mask from her face and summons her weapon to buy him time to flee. The weight of the scythe feels strange and natural all at once in her hand, so used to her sword as she is.
The creature is humanoid, skinless, covered head to toe in too many eyes and too many mouths. The curve of the scythe swings horizontally as she whirls, but the blade deflects off the Imperial soldier's hilt when he parries and slips past her guard. She whirls again to avoid, but his many-eyed arm swings hard against her side. She stumbles back and braces herself on the gate of her family home coughing hard, tasting iron.
The same, but different. The scenes flicker over each other. Monster, soldier. Sword, scythe. Robes, armor. Doma, metropolis. Her, but not her. Two scenes in tandem, familiar and unfamiliar.
She spits red, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and pushes off the wall, moving with more speed than she should for someone who no doubt had several broken ribs. She moves like a whirlwind, a tempest of pink, a flower hurricane. As the creature-soldier falls, she sees him.
Like the rest of the dream, he flickers, two images overlaid atop each other: the young, decorated Garlean Emperor from a portrait she'd seen as a girl, and a white-haired man in black robes and a red mask; the man who gave the order to conquer and raze her home, and her dearest friend and companion. His name tears from her lips in two voices, primal rage and desperate relief.
❝ Solus! ❞ ─── ❝ Hades! ❞
For a moment she thinks she sees surprise on his face. Like he hadn't expected her there, or perhaps hadn't expected her to call to him. She doesn't get the chance to find out why. Before she can take two steps toward him—armed, empty-handed, same, different—the dream ends abruptly when the First Doom's jaws close on her from above.
Koharu bolts upright with a gasp, chest heaving, drenched in sweat, a white-knuckled fist clenched around the hilt of the tantō she keeps under her pillow.
Awake, with the nightmare still fresh in her mind, she's able to fully appreciate its abnormality in full. It had begun in memory, as it always had, then shifted to the visions she'd seen from the refugees in Mor Dhona, as it always does, but the rest... The city she'd never seen before, the people she'd never known, the sky falling, the abominations. And him in the midst of both, half out of place.
She takes a deep breath and drags a hand through her hair—the other still firmly gripping the knife drawn out from beneath the pillow—pulling the sticky strands back from her face.
Just a dream, she tells herself, slowly sliding out of bed onto unsteady legs to seek out a hot shower and dry clothes. It was just a dream She will not be getting back to sleep.
