Night Mares

Chapter One: Perchance to Dream

I'm dreaming.

And yet he was aware. Albel took a step in the blackness. Lucid dreaming they called it, when you dreamed yet knew you were dreaming. He could not recall ever experiencing such before. His dreams were usually consuming, like living horrors, so real they left an ache in his bones upon waking.

How fitting that his subconscious was a stretch of black nothingness.

He took another step and cast about in the emptiness for some spark of light or color. His body, it held no heat, but rather felt soaked with the same stale chill that choked the air in this place. Experimentally he stamped a foot upon the ground plane and though he felt the impact of a solid floor, it nevertheless made no sound nor existed in any visual sense. He could see only himself and the Crimson Scourge, throbbing in his hand like a living heart.

"Thus shall you be tested."

That voice. He aimed a narrow-eyed glare down at the sword. Only once before had the Scourge spoken to him, but he still remembered that immortal voice, echoing into the abyss of infinity, dragging out raw memories from his mind.

"Is this your doing then?"

"Think you that I would suffer your touch unchallenged all your life long? Think you that one trial has earned you that right? Presumptuous."

Albel only scoffed. He had little patience for the katana's posturing. Oh, he'd endured it back then, counted it a necessary test. He had nothing to prove, not anymore. "Whatever it is, get on with it."

"Should you wish to keep me in hand, you must grow ever stronger. You must never stop challenging your own weaknesses. Find them. Draw them out of yourself. Kill them."

A pale shape wavered in the blackness.

"Your night mares shall come hence to test you."

It was ghostly white and ugly as sin, so bony that skin was but a formality. Though it was more or less horse-shaped, it's eyes were human eyes set into the sides of its gaunt head, giving it an unnatural and deformed look. Wait...not just any human's eyes. A closer look sent Albel a jolt of familiarity. The thing had his eyes. That was...disconcerting. But not enough to make him drop his guard. The mare lifted its upper lip in what was surely a sneer and Albel caught the glint of sharp canines, a predator's teeth. It tossed its head and pranced around him in a jerky dance, ears laid back, fangs bared, and he turned with it, sword at the ready.

"Hmph," he said. "This is it? This is the best you can do? Some imaginary monster? Pitiful. I'm of a mind to feel insulted." As if he hadn't faced worse right outside his home in the untamed mountains of Airyglyph. As if Luther's formidable creations hadn't put this thing to absolute shame.

With a shriek like a banshee, the pathetic creature lunged at him, but it was far too slow. All it took was a quick sidestep and a slice across its thin throat and down it went, collapsing dead at his feet as all of Albel the Wicked's enemies eventually did.

How weak. Almost a disappointment. He'd gotten his blood up for nothing. Albel nudged the thing with his foot. It didn't even look like much. Just a pile of bleached bones and skin. "It seems I've cut short your fun," he said to the katana. "Enough of this. You're wasting my sleep."

The Scourge only laughed, a sound that set gooseflesh rippling across Albel's skin. "How naïve of you to think you can use me to kill my own invocations. Be you now enlightened. Awaken and see your fine work."

Albel was forced awake and his eyes were forced open. He stood beside Fayt's bed in the inn room they shared, dark save for the pale moonlight bouncing off the snow outside and spilling through the window in a glory of silver.

And Fayt lay lifeless in the bed with his throat open.

I…

He felt himself unraveling. The slice through Fayt's throat was so deep it had almost cleaved his head off. Thick, hot blood pooled around his shoulders and dripped from the Scourge, and Fayt's eyes—vibrant green even in the dim light—had snapped open and now stared empty, soulless. That familiar, hollow stare that Albel had seen in corpse after corpse in his bloodier days. It had never shaken him before. Fayt.

No, I…

Just as he felt his mind about to shatter like thin glass there came the insane feeling of his psyche unfolding, the feeling of waking up again, of opening another set of eyes, and between one blink and the next, reality...changed.

He did stand beside Fayt's bed with the Crimson Scourge naked in his hand, but Fayt was live and whole and sleeping in peace. Oblivious. And so, so vulnerable. Albel's eyes cinched shut. He took a deep breath and opened them again, but the scene remained unchanged this time.

The little fool sleeps too heavy, Albel thought, numb with shock. The sound of the katana sliding from its sheath should have woken him. Albel would have to make a point of interrupting the boy's sleep in unpleasant ways from now on until he learned to slumber more softly. For his own good, naturally.

"What was that all about?" he asked the katana, hissing the words in a whisper, snapping himself back to reality and gripping the hilt so hard it seemed it should crack in his hand. He could not tear his eyes from Fayt. It had been so complete, the illusion. The sound of dripping blood in his ears, the smell of slaughter, the metallic taste of it in the air. Fayt, gone. And Albel...on the verge of something. Right on the edge of shedding composure and falling into a place he never wanted to go again. A place of need. Need for another person. Oh gods above. He thought he'd pushed himself beyond that.

"This is the beginning," came the response. Albel grinded his teeth at the eternal, mocking voice in his head. "Kill your night mares, or they will kill you."

Laughter like steel daggers cut into Albel's mind and he found the cursed katana's sheath and slammed it home before dropping it to the floor in a clatter of noise. Fayt stirred, but still didn't wake up. Fool! Incompetent, careless fool! Sleeping heavy like that could get him…killed.

Legs shaking, Albel leaned on Fayt's bed and raked his eyes over the boy's body. Shirt hiked up to his chest, sheets tangled about his knees, the muscles of his exposed stomach etched in moonlight.

Breathing in, out. Alive.

Funny. There had been a time when he would have counted Fayt's death exquisite to behold. When his fancies lingered on the slide of steel through flesh. When life was the price and death the reward.

His fancies lingered on other things these days. When had that happened?

Albel slid a knee up and climbed onto the bed. What if I'm still not really awake? To test it, he reached out and ran his flesh fingers through Fayt's blueberry hair, finding him warm and real. After the unthawed nothingness that clung to him in the vision dream, the texture of Fayt's hair triggered a visceral pleasure in him. Real. This was real. Strands flowed through his fingers then fell—blue on ivory, lovely—into stillness against Fayt's moon-kissed skin.

"Mmuh…Albel?" Bleary eyes blinked up at him.

Now he wakes up. Albel snatched his hand away, climbing down and stalking over to his own bed. "Nothing, fool! Go back to sleep and stop bothering me."

"But…" His sleep-muddled confusion might have struck Albel as endearing if his mind weren't still recoiling at what he'd thought he'd done. "You're the one who…mm…" Fayt closed his eyes and burrowed deeper into the blankets, drifting already.

The cool linen sheets settled over Albel's skin, comfortable but not comforting. He stared through the shadows and darkness at the smudge of blue that was Fayt's hair and fed his fury at the Scourge. How dare that chunk of metal presume to toy with his mind! And after all that it made him admit to in Airyglyph's treasure vault. Bloody, cursed thing. If it weren't the best sword he'd ever had the privilege of wielding he'd have tossed it into an icy crevice long ago. But whatever ridiculous game the katana was playing at, he'd have to worry about it tomorrow after they reached the castle. The big blonde idiot had sent them a message weeks ago asking them to make their way there in time for the Winter Solstice.

Now, at journey's end, just when he found himself actually looking forward to taking his ease in the city, this new aggravation reared its head.

It won't get me again with one of those mares. I'll be ready for it next time, and I'll throw its absurd test back in its face.

Though he lay there with Fayt's breathing to lull him, it wasn't until the sky began to lighten that Albel could sleep again. The last thing he heard was the katana's words tumbling over and over again in his head.

"This is the beginning. Kill your night mares, or they will kill you."

AN: So here I go on my first multi-chapter fic. Hope it pleases! Do let me know what you think. (: