An Exile of One's Own Taking, A Prison of One's Own Making

“He just, vanished, Sara, I don’t know how else to describe it.” Lione and Gwen stood before Sara and Clare. Kent was nowhere to be seen.

“I have seen too many men just up and vanish Lionheart, I am getting rather tired of it.” Sara did not know why Gwen was standing next to Lione.

“I tried to capture him but I had nothing on him-”

“No! You tried to fight him! You tried to overpower and subdue, to bend him! Are you so childish?” Sara was angry. Clare would normally have tried to mitigate such negative emotion, but there was a history here that she could perceive but not understand.

“Sara, please, I don’t even know how I did what I did. None of this...magic makes any sense to me. He had a command over whatever it was far beyond me. I should be dead.” Gwen held Lione’s arm tight at such a thought.

Sara cooled, if only slightly. “Why must one or another man die for men to feel they have done a great thing?”

“Alright, Queen, enough.” There was a fire in Lione’s eyes as he stepped forward a bit, releasing Gwen’s hand in the process.“I was in the streets, I saw people smiling stupidly while the ground opened up beneath them. I don’t care what you think, I did what I could, and barely that.”

“Your convictions are so strong, and so wrong, Lione.”

“Maybe. But I do know one thing for absolute certain. This place is still not safe. The ground is hollowed out, and whatever you did, whatever you are doing to hold the Gray City up? It is a foundation of your own making, and dies when you do.”

“I have put aside artifice and have set things right. Like my father would have wanted. And now I hear you are leaving, like your father has done. Fitting.”

“I speak for these people, and this place, I am avatar and I can hear what our ancestors whisper.” Lione burned a little brighter, stood a little taller, and his voice seemed to echo like it should not have in the conference room with its fabric wrapped wall panels. He became aware of himself, and lessened his voice to say “I am telling you that this place is not safe for your people.”

“The city must stand. The city will stand.” Sara did not grow or diminish, she simply spoke, and what she said was true.

“I am nothing more than the servant of the life that is here Sara, I am telling you what I believe is going to happen.”

Sara looked to Gwen, who could not hold her gaze. She said, to no-one in particular, “where is Lord Hellsmith?”
There was a pause before Clare answered, “Ah, Sara, he is home. He was injured in the events of recent days.”

Sara looked back at Lione. “And where are his children? I believe both his son and his daughter are of age to stand in representation of his house.”

Lione did not hesitate. “He has sent them to leave with me, and with the many others like us.”

“You call yourself avatar, and yet you flee.”

“I protect the people.”

“Fitting really, your father fled as well.”

“My father was beaten, broken, spat on, convinced there was nothing left here for him, Sara,” Lione was straining, trying, wanting for her to see this, “even before the Dream he was not loved, but then he had to forget about my mother and me in order to keep us hidden from Victor Creed and his Yellow King. He went to the woods to die.” He paused, he looked to Clare, and Gwen, and then back to Sara. For some reason Sara’s face was the only one that remained hard. Lione gave up. “But we are going, Queen, and we are going to live, to preserve the things that made us come here in the first place.”

“Then go Lione, and take whomever you can convince. I stay.”

Lione and many others went out from the city into the woods, to meet Hector and the people who lived in the shade of the great wood. Sara let them go, but held on to her bitterness. In her room in the capitol, she was alone. Which is when the King of Dreams is strongest I am told.

Daniel had no idea where he was. Well, no, that’s not true, he knew exactly where he was. He just did not know how to get from where he was to where he wanted to be, which is what people mean when they say they don’t know where they are.

Small, dark, dank room. Bars on the window set too high to reach. Door with a slot opened from the other side. And, hung around his neck and pressed against his bare chest as he lay on the slim mat that was the only thing covering part of the hard floor, a large key that opened the door to his cell. It was a trap of course. Daniel knew for a fact that if he opened the door he would be free, which was the trap of course.

Water dripped down the walls. Daniel had moved the mat so that he could see the stars out the window. They were strange and danced wildly.

He tried to sleep, just for a minute, then he laughed when he remembered that he was already dreaming. He got up and walked between the walls, then jumped on the ceiling. He stood on the ceiling, which was a lot like the floor. The window was in the same place, and he laid down on the ceiling on his mat to look out at the stars again. Water still dripped down the walls, or rather, dripped up, now that he was on the ceiling, or dripped down, now that the ceiling was the floor. He amused himself with this little paradox for a whole year while he blinked, and then jumped to the floor again, even though that would, and did, take another decade.

You know you will have to open the door eventually.

“I don’t have to do anything.” Daniel sat cross-legged, picking at some pebbles on the floor-ceiling-wall place. “Case in point, I have not pooped this milenia.” ;)

You know why you will have to open the door, has nothing to do with any bodily need. None of this ever has.

“Well, what I know has hardly anything to do with it either, doesn’t it?” Daniel laid back down on his mat, hands behind his head. “For instance, I could have sworn the people in the dream would die if the dream was taken away suddenly. I read the Book of Dreams. I ran the numbers like four times.”

You did not have all the variables.

“Oh, so you lied. The Book was a lie. That tracks.”

No, the book was my life’s work.

“Funny that, no record of your life at all outside the book you wrote. Am I, am I even real?” Daniel sat up in mock concern, feeling himself to make sure he was there, and then laughed as he fell back on the mat.

Is it pride that keeps you so ignorant of that which you already know?

Daniel soured. “I wish you would leave me alone, knowing that you have led me here. I’m trapped here or out there, yay, happy now?”

I did not lead you here to stay, I led you here to go through it.

“Oh, so that’s why you gave me the key?” Daniel held it up, twirled it around. The string did not tangle or shorten, and Daniel knew without trying he could not remove it from his neck.

You know that key is the thing you started with.

Daniel decided to ignore the voice. Or was it a thought? It could be echoing off the walls, or maybe the stars were talking to him in photons that could only register in the auditory cortex of the unluckily mutated.

Dreamwalker.

“I regret looking for you.”

You do not mean that.

Daniel didn’t bother contradicting, the thought-voice was right. “I wish I could be simply Danny Creed, middling chemist with a passion for trivia night at the bar down the street.”

You do not mean that either.

“Ok, well, can I least feel sorry for myself a little?”

Come on, son, you have work to do.

“Son?” Daniel stood, stamped, struck the walls, “how dare you! What do you think got me here in the first place? Work? Work! Your theories I chased because I thought them right! Victor Creed disgraced geologist. Crazed dictator with a fetish for the color yellow.” Daniel shoved himself in a corner and slid to his haunches, sobbing. “I wanted you to be my father. I wanted you to be right.”

I have never hidden myself from you. I told you everything that would happen.

“I know.”

I love you son. You are strong, you can do what needs to be done.

Daniel stood and wiped away tears. “You have always had an elastic definition of strength.”

Open the door.

“You know what happens when I do that.”

You become more, and I fade away forever.

“And yet…?” Daniel let the question hang in the air, the implication was obvious.

There is no trick, Daniel, I am ready to leave, to be with your mother, but you are still very much a part of this plane, and will be for a long time to come.

“Fine.”

Good, let us go then.

Daniel smiled, sat cross-legged, and picked at some pebbles. “Not yet,” he said, and before the thought could protest raised a finger “your math was off by a bit.”

Well, well, well, you have my smarts and your mother’s sas.

“There is still one thing you will have to explain, you know.”

Oh?

“Who or what the hell is this yellow king, and how did it come here?”

That will be a long and twisting story.

“I got nothing but time.”