A Memory I Dreamed

[Jack]

64th of Ash, Year 4621

He was bent over in a vast sea of sand, leaning before the frame of their broken-down Chariot, the only thing separating the boy and his father from death in the vast, scathing wastes.

"Jacques... that method does not work. You have to--"

"Yes it does, Dad. Just... shut the fuck up fer a second an'..."

A strike to the mouth. Blood. In an instant, he felt a blunt pain wracking the bridge of his nose. It wasn't from the back of a hand or a fist, but the air itself, reverberating around him... beating like the wings of an insect.

"Don't you ever speak to me like that again."

He cried, reeling in pain. It hurt. He felt the bone crack; he even heard it. His vision blurred as tears filled his eyes, as his mind became wracked with the numbing, vivid sensation. All he could whisper were a few words. "Yes, sir," he said back. "Never again... sir."

Reality folded around him. Pastures flickered by; the dunes of sand, the howling winds. The many, colliding voices of the Badlands... always speaking blood, always speaking war. Vengeance, autonomy, strength. Peace was beyond them. They found their tranquility in eternal conflict.

A man appeared before him. A familiar face. Harold Reeve, one of the leaders of Scythe. Behind him... it wasn't so vivid anymore. Blurry, a rising sun obscuring it all with a radiance no man could stand. He couldn't remember if it had been this way when this event actually took place. Sometimes he barely knew whether or not his dreams and memories were the same as conscious reality. Maybe because of that, he listened as intently as if they were.

"...The Free Access Tower should be every man's tool; a commodity 'round these parts for the whole of us. Something we can use to live. Instead... the Bloodbreakers wield it as a bludgeon; a weapon of war."

. . .

"Outpost-11 isn' nothin', Johnny. I told you. The answer's not in those ruins of the past. It's in the future; it's in the barrel of this gun."

. . .

Visions kept shifting through, like those grains of sand. One after the next. More and more.

Dreaming. Did it never stop? Every time his mind succumbed to sleep, those flickering visions followed him. Dream after story after dream.

"I'm sick of it, Johnny... I'm tellin' you. It's like--I'm always in my head. Or maybe my head's in me... or the world's in my head, like it's all just nothin'. Nothin' but games. Remnant... the memories. They're just like they're real.

"I'm losin' my mind, just like Dad."

And now, he really was. The Madness was seeping in.

The dream ended. All of them did. To the sight of the rising sun through the light fabric surrounding him, he awoke, narrowing his eyes as his back rose, straightening within the tarp. He breathed. "Gotta kill those stories," he whispered beneath his breath. "Close my own Engrams. Not worth it anymore."

Minutes passed, and he was fully dressed, packing all of his belongings into compact rolls and tying them together above, below or within his pack, which he carried with him through all of his journeys. Despite being a Badlander now, he kept his Chariot at home, with Scythe and trusted friends. It would do nothing but invite misery in Mithira-Prior, everyone said. The more he wandered back, the more he was certain they were right. He doubted the wheels could survive the wild uncertainty that was their terrain. He remembered it all, now, so much more vividly. The ridges, cliffs, sharp and pointed rocks... the great savannah right outside of the Badlands interior, one that stretched into a more jagged desert to the south, and to a land of neverending autumn where he was headed.

He wasn't far from Railón, where he was born. A part of him did miss that place. It was beautiful... and warm, but not in the way that the Badlands were. It was nice. The thought of seeing Levarin's waters made his chest flutter in a way it hadn't in a very long time.

More time passed. Now, he was wandering the road along the Vinasir river, staring out towards the deep blue waters that made anything in the Badlands look eerie and foul.

"Oui, but alas, mon friend-dogman, wielding your tail in this public space is quite the indelicacy. As the handmaid to Lady Verone, I request that you withdraw such protrusion into your coat immédiatement."

He turned to face the origin of the voice. A woman with a voice that was thick with Gentevarese, concealed from head to toe in silks, fanning herself as she scowled toward a strange beast. A Rathor--he remembered. He really did... look like a dog. Glancing forward, he could see a town not far away.

"...Fuckin' scags," he muttered beneath his breath. A term of disparagement he and his gang liked to wield in the face of the Imperial main. They never sat well with him. Not even as a child.

The voice he'd passed by erupted with surprise. "Ah, but your ears wiggle as I pet them! Oui, génial!"

Rolling his eyes, he approached the open gates of the town. Eyed by two Halamire with pikes as he crossed through, Jack held his breath for a moment, trying to remember his manners. How to communicate. He already didn't dress like a proper Daravain, and if any of these bastards knew he was supposed to be Entente, that issue would only be worse. He'd need to throw a few habits over his head, a silk wardrobe or two. He didn't understand why the elite of this land concealed themselves from the beauty around them, and the warmth of the sun.

The town was quiet. There were hastily-made wooden gates all over, and a man with a beak-carved mask strolling through to the fringes of the town square. He wondered if all of that meant 'plague'. If that was so, though, why were the gates open?

Exhaling, he glanced around. The man needed to restock on food. If this town was in quarantine, it wouldn't be another twenty miles until he found the next one. Even along the river, the population this far south was sparse.

[Midhir]

After twenty years of not traveling at all, he had spent the last two months on the road. Midhir liked to think he was getting better at this, the whole vagabond lifestyle. He didn't stop to wonder if he was making enough progress or fast enough progress. In fact, he couldn't say that he had a set goal in mind other than to see what the world had to offer. It had offered him good and bad in about equal measure, and for the time being, at least, he was going to keep following the river west. At least he always had water to drink and to bathe, and ever since water had been his death and his rebirth, a nearness to it had been soothing.

There had been good advice at that first village, and so he was following some best practices, trying not to pass a settlement by without first resupplying in case it was farther than he expected to the next place. The wolf that seemed to have adopted him was nowhere to be found, leery of walls and people that walked on two feet except for Midhir himself. He supposed that was luck. The wolf apparently thought he was helpless, always bringing him freshly slaughtered meat to be charred on his campfire and consumed along with whatever else he had. He still wasn't much of a cook, but necessity was the mother of invention and practice made—if not perfect, then—better.

If his robes were strange, they had been augmented by other pieces as he had accumulated them against the growing chill in the air at night. And in these small communities, it seemed any outsider was strange. He knew now to bow to the Halamire guards and show undue deference rather than find himself in a fight he hadn't picked, or a dungeon for the night. That had been unpleasant, though now he could say he had been in a dungeon before.

The town did seem quiet, though, compared to others. Not all of them had the Imperial guards, but those that did were those with enough of a population to require more policing. This one's streets were nearly empty. Near the town square, he saw a man in a bird mask and one without. While he thought the bird mask might be interesting to investigate, he opted to follow the other man. Chances were better that he would find a supplier willing to barter with him. At least, that was what he told himself.

The monastery had been laid out so logically, or perhaps he was just so used to it that it seemed the logical way to place things. The towns of southern Daravin were each laws unto themselves, at least insofar as urban planning went. He picked up his pace to keep the man in his sight.

[Jack]

"I dream every night that I..."

The sun was setting over the horizon. The two leaned against the rusted rail, overlooking the edge of Outpost-5, staring out into the crags that rose amidst the sea of sand.

"What, Jack? What do you dream?"

"That's what I was about to tell ya, Mindy. Shut--" He suddenly laughed, as the Gnome struck his side with her finger, igniting a ticklish sensation across his body as he reeled from her, slapping and batting her off. "ANYWAY," he yelled out, catching her hands and pushing the woman back slightly. "That I'm back there again. You know--the Empire. Knee-deep in shit, begging, crawling, just tryna make it out alive. Then I learn. I remember how to do it right. I remember to be myself, ya know? The man I was meant to be."

"Is that who you were meant to be, Jack?" she whispered. He looked towards her, a glint of recognition in his eyes; solemn, cold. Then, he looked away, out toward the dunes again, with a half-lidded stare. Even more solemn, only... looking away. Looking at something that couldn't look back, and judge him for his weakness.

"No," he whispered, looking up and back again to the horizon. To the encroaching darkness that curved around the glow of that great star. "But it was who I was born to be."

- - -

He felt eyes on his back. That was something he had always been good at, like street smarts were second nature to him. He knew when he was being watched, being shadowed. He knew when someone's intentions were somehow correlated, negatively, positively or otherwise, to his own. It was like that before he was a Mentalist. With the Neurocrux, that instinct only became sharper, even if only mildly. He wasn't the best at it. No, far from it... but he wanted to be. He was always training that part of his mind.

He didn't bother trying to lose the guy following him. He hadn't intended to be in town for long, anyway. Lucano, it was called, based on the signs he'd read... it was unfamiliar to him. If it was drenched in plague, all the more reason to stay away.

"Hungry, though..." he muttered to himself. "COULD MAYBE EAT THAT WOLF." That time, he didn't mutter. Instead, without turning to face the other, he raised his voice and yelled his supposed thoughts. A signal that he was well-aware of those eyes on him, which did not seem to falter. As much as he pretended not to care, living in the Badlands for so long made him naturally suspicious of others and their intentions. Even friends sometimes weren't friends. Even friends sometimes shot a bullet into your back, or a knife through your spine.

The exit-gate of the town was in sight. Lucano was dense, but the distance between its two gates weren't incredibly long. There was a port sector to the town, a 'harbor district' he imagined they would call it, and the rest went vertically south. When they got close enough to the gate, his feet turned on the cobbled street, and he narrowed his eyes towards the approaching Sil'norai. "The fuck you want?" he asked, clenching his teeth. "I don't have money for you. Try the brothel."

[Midhir]

The man wasn't difficult to follow, though the streets were bare so that could hardly be chalked up to any skill on Midhir's part. Some of the monks were hunters, and some foodstuffs were traded and bartered for. 'Each according to their skills' was a tenet of the lineage, and he supposed magic had been accorded him because Sil'norai were famously more resistant to the negative effects of magic. In some ways, his life had been easier for his innate strengths; in others, it was more difficult. The lineage was a pathway littered in tests and he supposed this walkabout was just that last test before becoming a monk in fact rather than just in training. He was not well-rounded. He was not well-read outside of his bailiwick. He was not well-trained to survive on his own, and while nature had seen to his needs with his furry companion, he had yet to fall into a cooperative group. There had been farmers willing to feed and house him for a few days in exchange for labor, magical or otherwise. There had even been one who would have housed him indefinitely, but his path was forward, not to linger overmuch.

He startled out of his reverie when the man shouted.

The wolf hadn't entered the city limits with him, and if it didn't find him on the other side of the town, he might circle back before continuing on so it could scent him and follow if it chose to do so. Had the man been observing him before he approached Lucano? Perhaps he smelled of wolf. He had certainly cozied up to it when the nights got cold.

But it wasn't until he neared the opposite end of the town that the man rounded on him with venom in his mouth. Midhir wasn't an expert, but he looked out of place as well, a traveler who didn't belong to Lucano or Lucano to him. He smiled quizzically.

"Oh, I am not a prostitute," he said, cheerfully informative. "I was just following you because you seemed to know where you were going and I need more supplies for the road ahead. I apologize for vexing you." He offered a strange bow from a strange monastery in the mountains of Khadai. Murmuring something like a benediction—he had learned to be quiet about such things in the land of the Omen—he turned toward the few food carts that seemed to be open. Lucano didn't have much to offer the traveler save suspicious guards, bird-masked physicians, and empty streets.

"Never been to a brothel before," he murmured thoughtfully to himself as he went.

[Jack]

The man glanced to the unknown Sil'norai's side, and then the other, only to recognize that he was in fact absent a wolf. He could've sworn -- no, he hadn't looked behind him. Maybe on the walk along the road to the town, on the fringes outside. There had been many travelers trudging along, after all. Jack wasn't the quickest among them, either, with all he was hauling. Even though he was a dying man, he never felt himself in much of a rush. Probably a product of all that hesitation. Amoren was far where it concerned physical distance, and farther still from the norms he had adapted to know. In essence? He was afraid. Even terrified.

Not that he would ever let that show. Instead, he chuckled as the other dismissed the label he had supposedly been given. Jack was a flippant man. That much was obvious just looking at him -- the way his eyes narrowed, the shit-eating, disrespectful smirk tied to his lips. "You'd be surprised by what people're willing to do. When they're desperate."

Prostitution, evidently. He remembered a story; this big, imposing guy, one of the leading members of the Bloodbreakers before Jorain's rise to total authority. Out in the desert, with nowhere to rest and no water to his name, he landed upon a barracks of one of the old gangs that the Iron Moon later wiped out. Slept with every man and woman in that place. All for water, just enough to last him a few nights. People couldn't decide whether they should mock or admire him, after that.

Remembrance of that story brought a faint curl to his lips, a soft smile. Distracted, he only half-gathered whatever it was that the Sil'norai had even said, waving it off. "Right. Well, truth is, I'm as lost as you are. Lucano was supposed to be my stop, but it looks like everyone's takin' a break from bein' useful here for a while." He gestured out towards the boarded doors, the empty streets. A huff escaped his lips. "You didn't vex me. It's whatever. Just a bit wary of people at my back, y'know? Things're scary these days. You never know who's on what side. Hell, sometimes you don' even know what side you're on."

He eyed him up-and-down. Humming, the Badlander pressed his finger against the side of his head, leaning into it slightly. "Jack. You?"

[Midhir]

Midhir turned back toward the man when he kept talking. He offered a cautious smile now that the man was engaged; experience had shown that getting people talking, especially about themselves, was almost a surefire way to find their good graces. Midhir wasn't a manipulative person, but now that he had to rely only upon himself, he was learning how to avoid unnecessary violence. Of course, the guards would crack both their skulls if something were to happen.

"I didn't mean anything by it," he offered. Prostitutes were just working with what they were given. If he hadn't been raised in magic and physical pursuits, who knew what he would have found to do to survive?

"I'm Midhir. It's a pleasure to meet you, Jack." Again with the strange outlander bow, almost as if he actually respected the strange stranger. "I don't have a side, but I have found that to be an insufficient answer to many people's questions." It was an admission of naivete, of inexperience. He might have added a few local articles of clothing to his person, but he still had his strange way of talking, of observing, of existing, and people reacted to that. Many of them reacted poorly, though he couldn't know why.

"There doesn't seem to be much for sale, but I was going to get some food to take with me west. If you want someone to walk beside you for a while instead of behind you, I wouldn't mind the company." He paused, considering. "Are you a prostitute? I have never met a prostitute before so I wouldn't know how to recognize one if I had." He considered this for a moment, replaying various recent events to see if there was evidence that he had, in fact, met a prostitute all unknowing.

The world was, after all, strange like that.

[Jack]

Jack's eyes flitted up-and-down the other as he offered him, again, that unusual bow. It was not something he had seen before, which almost inferred that the Sil'norai was from somewhere else, but... that was to be expected, he supposed. He was a Lord Elf, after all. They tended to be scattered all over. Thinking of that, he remembered that this was meant to be their homeland. More and more, he saw them lingering around, in far greater number than when he was a boy. He supposed history was correcting itself, as they returned to this place.

Midhir. His name was as odd and as outlandish as him. It didn't even quite fit with being a Sil'norai--it was more foreign and peculiar than that. "Midhir..." he repeated with a low whisper, squinting slightly. "Hm, no side. I envy ya. We'll see how long that lasts, though, yeah? Whatever; pleasure to meet you too." He offered his own sort of bow; his fist flinging to sock his shoulder, though playfully, gently. The Badlander way.

"I wouldn' recommend whatever food this place sells. We'll need to get to the next town... or at least find some sort of merchant or place along the road. Population's gettin' a little denser now, so I don' think it's too far-fetched." He laughed to himself, realizing he had already said we. As if it was certain that they'd be traveling together. He supposed that might as well have been his method of agreement.

"As for me bein' a prostitute... well, depends how you define it. I've sold my arm as a Merc for years, out in the Badlands. Sell my loyalty, my honor... not too different than sellin' my cheeks. Guess the only difference is that instead of makin' men happy, I cave in their throats. That's how it is in my world."

And here, too. But things here were far more formal. Public declarations, soldiers meeting on a field of battle. Everything in the Badlands was a skirmish, an ambush; everyone always needed to be on their toes, and prepare as if each decision, moment and hour was to be their last. All so that they didn't need to follow under the vices of the Entente, or so that they didn't need to leave the home comfortable to them. It was madness, but... given the emaciation of the people out here in the Marches? He couldn't blame that instinct. Better to be a soldier for your own cause than a slave toiling at the fields for maligned masters.

"...Anyway, suppose we can get goin'. Uh... where did you say you were from, again?"

[Midhir]

Midhir mimicked his Badlander salute, bringing his fist to his shoulder. He smiled; there was no malice in it, but rather the quiet joy of discovery. He was like a child in that, though he was a man grown, and he spoke like an adult, surely. His accent was a bit off, but so were some of his clothes, and his manner more than anything. But he was alive, which meant he wasn't so stupid or ignorant that he couldn't take care of himself. Or he was just quite lucky—that was always a possibility.

He considered the food carts and nodded thoughtfully.

"Don't worry about meat," he advised. "A wolf started following me around about a month or so ago and it brings me fresh kills. I think it judges me for not eating them raw, but I am not a wolf." He glanced toward the gate. "It doesn't like to approach human settlements, but I don't suppose you will scare it off."

As for how Jack had prostituted himself to survive, Midhir only offered, "Life demands compromise."

And then he was considering how much to tell the man.

"I was raised in the mountains of Khadai. I don't know where I was born." He shrugged.

Midhir wasn't the only orphan in the Kullu monastery. Some of the children were the children of monks; others foundlings or coming from every other walk of life. The identities of his parents had been unimportant in the eyes of the monks and so it was not shared with him, if they even knew them, if they had even cared. But there had been kindness in his early years. There had been kindness in his later years, as well, though more was always expected of him. He assumed the most was expected of the abbot, whose responsibility the entire lineage was.

Balance. Balance. Always balance.

"I don't know where I'm going, either," he admitted. "West along the river until something makes me change my course, I suppose. Do you have a goal in mind?"

[Jack]

"Knew you had a wolf..." he muttered beneath his breath, blowing a whiff of hair up towards his nose. The Badlander crossed his arms over his chest, brows furrowing as he thought. He always wished he had a companion like that out in the Badlands, but it would be another mouth to feed. Another mouth to feed where there wasn't much food. "And shit, I don' like human settlements either. So I guess that makes us two."

Grinning faintly, he returned his arms to his sides, before turning his neck back and forth once to get out a crick in his bones. "I'm good with animals. Used to have a few Grakains in Scythe--err, in my group. They're, uh... hard to explain, but think of 'em like big dogs that preserve water really well. Can survive pretty well in the desert. Yeah," he breathed, thinking of what else to say. He wasn't so good at small-talk. Far better at arguing, telling stupid stories, or otherwise narrating how he intended to catch life by the horns and dominate it. Optimism.

"Khadai..." he nodded. It wasn't like he really knew much about it, but he knew where that land was. He was from Railón, after all--those mountains he referred to were just a trek south. He had gone up close to them, before, as a young child... all the way out towards Zirean, with his father and mother. Back before everything really dismantled.

He realized, now, that it was his time to determine his own honesty. How much of his story he would tell -- how much Midhir needed to know, should have known, deserved to understand. Was this guy not just another passing face in a long line of thousands? Millions, that lived along this great road? How much would he really matter in a month? What was the likelihood he would try to have that wolf help him steal all of Jack's shit and run?

"Amoren," he answered, lowering his eyes for a moment. "Need to find a doctor. Can't find the sort I need where I'm from. The people like that who try to do good, or at least learn and innovate... they're all dead up in some bunker somewhere. Outpost-11."

He chuckled. That was more than he intended to tell, especially considering virtually none of it would make sense to an outsider. He decided not to elaborate more -- at least, not yet. "You can come along with me if ya want... Midhir. At least... until you change your course," he repeated the other man's words, cracking a faint smile as he did.

[Midhir]

"They can be a nice change of scenery," he allowed, but he also enjoyed the endless variety of the natural terrain, as well. He had seen more in a couple of months than he had in the rest of his life. But human settlements were often where he ran into trouble, so perhaps he could learn a thing or two about navigating them from Jack, however long the man deigned to share his company. Midhir had been raised to believe in non-attachment, but sometimes there were things that were easier to do with help.

"Grakains," he murmured, learning the new word with his definition. "Scythe like to reap grain?"

But he stopped himself from asking more questions. Jack seemed to be working himself up to share some without prompting and that was, from what he had found, better. Words like desert stuck in his memory to tease out later if conversation allowed. Words like Amoren and doctor and bunker and Outpost-11. He knew intuitively, or perhaps with some experience, that direct questions would close the man off and that would be the end of that. So many of Midhir's questions in life had been deemed unworthy of answers that he was not discontented when someone chose not to answer him anymore; at least, it was a minor thing, easier to shrug off.

"Perhaps my course will take me to Amoren," he said. He had heard the name before, another word that stuck in the memory for later. Perhaps this was fate or providence leading him where he ought to be. He didn't know if he believed all that, but the world was much larger and more complex than he was so he didn't want to be premature and say it wasn't any particular thing. That seemed like hubris to him. "And you're welcome to make friends with the wolf. It will let you know whether it wants you near or not. Wolves are honest."

People weren't always.

"Oh. I don't think I have enough to make me worth the time to steal from..." He grinned. "But people have tried. Shall we go?"

He half-turned toward the nearest gate, but waited for Jack. Having a companion would be new, but he was here for new experiences.