Free Web NovelChapter 1179: A long lost dream(1)
The light of a newborn sun bathed him, embracing his broken frame like a long-lost child in his mother’s arms.
He had never realized how much he craved that warmth, that golden, weightless caress, until he woke with the rays burning softly against his closed eyelids.
He lay upon a sea of emerald grass, the blades cool and supple beneath him.
Where was he?
His mind felt heavy, draped in a thick, drowsy veil that made every movement feel like treading through honey. He stared up at the sky, a vast, ethereal blue so perfect it felt painful to look upon.
There was no beauty in it for him, only a terrible, aching confusion.
The memories came back in rhythmic stabs each taking the breath from him and leaving a weight in his chest. He remembered the thunder of hooves. He remembered the glint of the lance-point and the crushing, mountainous force that had unmade the world. He remembered the mud, the blood, and death, oh old, familiar death.
I am the only man I know who has died so many times, he mused without humor as a small bird, its feathers the color of polished slate, fluttered down from the open sky. It skipped across the grass with light, rhythmic jumps, chirping at the silence of the field. It most certainly did not look like the hell he had expected.
For a moment he thought flame would sprout from the ground, to take him. When it did not he looked in himself.
Was this truly the end?Merely the final, gentle mercy of a mind amusing itself with a dream before the light went out forever? He had heard that dying men lingered in their thoughts for a time.
Would the land turn to black all at once? Or would it slowly crumble into ash in his hands, until he, too, was nothing more than a memory carried by the wind?There were worse way to go, that was true, it was postly painless.
He had thought he would face the end with the stoicism of a Prince, with the iron resolve of the man he inspired himself to be.
Instead, he felt a hot, salty wetness tracing the lines of his face.He had thrown the dice and he had failed.
The weight of failure hung heavy above him.
Had the Legions broken at the sight of his fall? Had they fought harder, spurred by his blood in the muck? Had he told them to fight even after his death?Or had he forgotten?
Were Rosalind and Basil safe? Would his friends survive to shield them, or would the dream of Yarzat go to ash along with his body? In a century’s time, would he be remembered as a a pitiful peasant who reached for a star and was burned for his arrogance?
"How sad an end. How pitiful a man," they would whisper over his grave.
He recalled a question asked long ago, in a life that felt like another man’s history: "How do you desire your death to be?" He had answered that he wanted a death where doubt did not linger. He realized now, with the bitter taste of tears on his lips, that he had failed even that.
He wept more. freewebnσvel.cѳm
"Your tears are undeserving of such a beautiful place, my wayward friend"
The voice came from behind him, drifting through the warm air like the scent of summer wine. It was a familiar voice, vibrating with a jolliness and a rough-edged warmth that he had missed more than he realized.
Alpheo turned slowly, his heart stuttering. He knew then, with a crushing certainty, that he was dreaming. For there, in the deep, cooling shade of a Great Oak, untouched by the glare of the burning sun, stood a ghost of a long-lost time.
The man was leaning against the trunk, his face creased with a wide, easy grin. He looked as he always had, before the weight of the world had taken him.
Alpheo wiped his eyes with a trembling hand, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper. "I must truly be dying."
The man pushed off the tree, his boots making no sound on the emerald grass as he stepped toward him. "It has been quite a bit, Alph," Egil said, his eyes dancing with the old light. "You took your sweet time getting here."
Alpheo stared at him, his throat tight, the emerald grass feeling far too solid beneath his palms to be a lie. He didn’t move. He didn’t rise. He just watched the man who had been his failed conscience and his courage, waiting for the vision to shatter.
"You look like shit," Egil said, his grin widening as he sat cross-legged a few paces away.
Alpheo wiped a final streak of salt from his cheek and looked at his hands. They were clean. No mud. No blood. Just skin.
"I hate it all." Alpheo said, his voice clipped and dry. ’’I hate you.I hate me. I hate this place above all.’’
Egil raised a skeptical eyebrow, gesturing to the infinite blue above and the absence of screaming men. "Really?This beautiful paradise? Could’ve fooled me. Last I saw, you were trying to catch an Oizenian lance with your face. Not a winning strategy, usually."
"I would like to say it missed," Alpheo muttered.
Why am I even speaking?
"Clearly." Egil leaned back on his elbows, looking entirely too comfortable for a ghost. "So, if you aren’t dead, what are you doing in my neck of the woods? You look like a man who’s lost his way."
On that he was right. He had been lost for so long.
Alpheo finally met Egil’s gaze, his eyes hard and hollow. "I lost the army."
"Did you?"
"I lost the boy. I lost the field." Alpheo turned his head away, his jaw tightening until it ached. "I’m here because I failed.I.....I just lost?"
Egil let out a short, sharp laugh that sounded like a bark. "Failed?Lost? You’re breathing, aren’t you? That’s more than I can say for myself."
Alpheo felt the cold air in his chest.
Weird.
"Not for long." Alpheo replied.
"Then get up."
"No."
"No?The friend I knew didn’t lay in the grass crying while his people were being butchered. You made a choice back there, Alph. You threw the flag. You can’t just throw it and then take a nap because it got a bit heavy on your arm..."
’’You saw that?’’
’’Best thing ever in a long time. It get boring you know?’’
Alpheo’s gaze snapped back to him. "I’m tired."
"Tough shit," the ghost replied, standing up and casting a long shadow over the Prince. ’’You really going to lay down while your friend is pushing you up?’’
’’Friend?’’ His eyes moved away from him and turned to the sky. ’’You are not my friend.’’
That seemed to stung him.’’Ouch. I thought we had conciliated?Did my death really not spurr any love ?I recall you cried quite a lot.Though wherever that was you missing me or your guilt. As misplaced as that was, Gods only know’’
’’Gods?’’ Alpheo asked looking at him with a sadness as if he had realised the key that indeed made his worries true. ’’I recall you did not believe in them,There was only the horse spirit in you’’
Egil shrugged at his sorroundings. ’’Things happened’’
Silence lingered for an heartbeat. He hated just how calming everything felt.
’’What are they going to appear then? You are not real.Let me accept that in silence’’ His eyes moved to the bird that was perching up on his chest, when he had got there he did not know. ’’This bird is not real.That sun.That sky. This grass. None is.’’
’’Are you real, then?’’
He looked up at the man’s face.How long had he craved to see that smile?
’’Gods only know.’’
The ghost of his friend chuckled, and a small smile indeed bloomed in the prince’s face, that was before the groudness of his station came back.
’’This is just a play of the mind,we probably have some minutes before all goes black. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Reality is a field of mud and the sound of my men dying.’’
He looked at the small bird perched on his chest. It felt light, a mere thimble of warmth, but as he reached out a hand, in fear and yet hope, his fingers passed through the feathers as if they were made of morning mist.
"See?" Alpheo whispered, his voice cracking.As even that small flicker of hope hurt to see burnt to ash. "None of it holds. Not the bird. Not the sun. Not you."
He did not dare touch him however. He could not bear it.
"And yet," Egil replied, his voice echoing as if from the bottom of a deep well, "here you are, talking to the wind. If I’m just a ghost of your guilt, why am I so bored of your excuses?"
"Because my mind is as tired of me as I am," Alpheo said. He closed his eyes, expecting the black to take him, expecting the weight of the lance to finally finish its work.ù
But the only thing he felt was his head being heavy.
And of course the warmth of the sun remained. It was persistent. It was annoying.
’’Why do you think this not real?’’ His friend asked softly, peering down at him as if he were some ant beneath his foot.
"What’s the alternative, Egil? That some God with too much time and a twisted sense of theater plucked me from a hell of steel just to give me a stroll in the park? Am I so important? Is my war some holy crusade that necessitates divine intervention? I’m a man who broke the world to see if I could put it back together. If there are Gods, we should be warming the same fire in the pit, sharing a laugh at how badly we botched it."
Egil’s face dropped then. The jolliness vanished, leaving behind a mask that Alpheo couldn’t quite read. It wasn’t the look of a manifestation. It was the look of a man who had seen the punchline of a joke Alpheo was still trying to tell.
The ghost didn’t answer. He didn’t offer a philosophical rebuttal or a sentimental hug. Instead, Egil turned his back and began to walk.
"Where are you going?" Alpheo called out, his voice sounding small against the vast, blue silence.
Egil didn’t look back. He simply raised a hand, gesturing over his shoulder for Alpheo to follow. "The theater is closing, Alph. If you want to see how the play ends, you’d best keep up. Or stay here and rot in your own head. I’ve got places to be.Well...we’ve got places to be.
What guide would I be without by trainee trailing behind?"
