Dreams

	Willow dreams of many things; of glory, of striking down evil in the name of the Empyreal Guard, but during particularly stressful times, a number of similar and distressing dreams creep into the forefront.

	The first and most prominent features Willow, having just disembarked their covered wagon at the beckon of a hysterical woman. She says something; she rambles about recognizing the insignia on their cart, and she asks if they have any medical supplies, anything that would help her with some kind of hunting accident. The details are lost in the blur, as the trees that line either side of the path grow tall and imposing, and so too does Willow. Their black robes seem to grow in length, and the light of the sun no longer graces the scene, and they loom over the woman in silence. She begins to back away, and in a flurry of motion, with an afterimage of hungry darkness that chases every of their many swift slices, she is cut down, her blood staining the robes indelibly and eroding the insignia on them.

	Another, more real one haunts them in times of particular torment. They are lucid, in the same bed that they fell asleep in, but something wells within them. It roils and hisses like acid, and burns just the same as it courses through them. They stagger out of bed, their svelte form stumbling in the dark as they reach for nothing in particular. They clench their teeth and they drag their dagger out of their pile of equipment and then they face something at the opposite end of the room. It is dark, and looming, and nondescript, baring only a hungry, slathering maw that surely threatens to clamp down on their head. They lash out at it in heroic fashion, ramming their dagger into its throat and casting it away with a heavy gravitic blast, and in the combat they find themselves alone, their guts spilled out between their legs, their dagger impaled haphazardly in their stomach, and the darkness seeping from within them as they heave.

	The final is the most simple, and it comes to them even on some good nights. They sit alone, in silence, in an empty room. There is a presence with them, but they do not see more than a silhouette.

---

	Achlyta does her best not to dream. Some voice in the back of her head warns that the evil somehow has more power over her when she sleeps, and even being the smart woman she is, she cannot help but bow to that voice's whims. She spends days at a time awake, and strangely often does not seem worse for the wear in spite of it.

	Still, when she dreams, they are mostly positive, and untainted by the tempting siren's call of her heritage that she so thoroughly works to avoid.

	She dreams of her parents; of her mother's workshop, the smell of freshly cut wood and the rhythmic pounding of hammers and grinding of saws, as she helps her mother on her newest project. She dreams of her father's kitchen, the warm seaside sunlight dancing in through the windows on a hot summer day as the two feel their way through their newest culinary experiment, or the comfort of the oven's warmth on a particularly rainy and cold day.

	She dreams of the ceremonies in the temples, of the friendly townsfolk she used to know either in passing or in detail, of the beach itself as the sunswept tides rocked against the warm sand she spent her childhood sifting for beautiful little shells and stones that she would proudly bring to her mother. She dreams of setting out to sea in the heart of summer with both of her parents, of the hearty fish they would pull from beneath the waves, even of the calm days they spent simply chatting and not catching a thing.

	She dreams of someplace other than Mourning Ridge, every time.