Filia Ul Copt rarely dreamed of her former life among the Gold Dragons.
Those memories-of obedience, of purity, and faith and devotion-had no real place in her new life of wet clay, splintery wooden floors, and diapers. Almost a year's time since had flown by, and she was too busy to either notice or complain. At night she retired to her little bedchamber under the eaves of the old house, and fell asleep to the sound of the house groaning and muttering to itself. If she dreamed a dream, dragons figured in it not at all.
Tonight, however, was different. A restless and frustrating day dealing with customers lead to restless and frustrated sleep piled under itchy woolen blankets-the nights had become unseasonably cold as of late-and in her dreams, Filia found herself standing by the Karyuuou no Shinden.* Not as it had been in the past, during her days of service as a miko there - but as it looked now, filled with dust, neglected, the golden towers crumbling and rejoining the dust of the desert it sat in.
Filia looked at it sadly for a few moments, her chest weighed with something heavy and bitter, dry as the dust that surrounded the Shinden. The light scrape of stone startled her, and she made a cautious half-turn.
Leaning heavily on his cane, Saichuroh, former Gold Dragon Elder, regarded her with his flat gold eyes, his old face drawn into a million dry wrinkles. He stepped forward.
"Filia," he rumbled, his voice sounding as if it were coming from many miles under water. "I've been waiting."
"Sai..Saichuroh-sama, what do you mean by being here? You're.."
"Dead. Yes," Saichuroh said. "I see you haven't lost your ability to state the obvious," he added dryly, "but you're young yet."
Filia looked around for a place to sit, as her legs were protesting the arrival of this apparition. Finding nothing but sand in her dreamscape, she settled for that.
"Filia," Saichuroh began again, then stopped, as if choosing his words carefully. "Filia, listen to me. Your time is short, and the danger is great."
Filia stared. "What danger? What are you talking about? Why are you in my dream? What's going on?"
"Stop babbling for five seconds, and listen to me. You may have time to waste on idle chatter, but I do not," Saichuroh snapped.
"I'm sorry sir," Filia said humbly. Then she took a deep breath, straightening her houlders. "I'm just not used to being addressed by the dead in dreams. And in my nightclothes besides."
Saichuroh studied her for a moment, the angry lines at the corners of his mouth fading as he did. He took another step forward. "The Darkness is coming, Filia."
Filia's mouth dropped open. "Darkness? An...another war, do you mean?"
"It may come to that," Saichuroh said heavily. "Vague shadows now, that may signify the beginning of something far darker and much more unpleasent. Filia, do you remember your catechism?"
"Some, sir," Filia replied, not quite sure what Saichuroh was leading her to.
"Good. Remember, refer to it if needs be. You will have visitors, Filia. You must assist them in any way you can."
"Who?"
"That I can not tell. Knowing too much may have adverse effects on the purpose we are trying to accomplish. Besides," Saichuroh said, smiling grimly, and without humor, "it would spoil the surprise."
Filia looked down at her neatly folded hands. "I understand."
"Good," Saichuroh said. His face seemed to settle into angry dark gashes, mimicing the wounds that had killed him. The scene was fading.
"Goodbye," Filia called, waving to him as the ground retreated, and she spun further and further away.
"Goodbye." Saichuroh had not moved during this, but as the scene finally darkened into blindness, Filia heard something, a few words floating back to her from the void.
"The night..........."
Filia lay in bed for a few minutes more afterwards, awake, but breathing as though still asleep, the back of her neck prickling. "What a dream," she muttered, half-knowing, and half-fearing what Saichuroh had stated was to be. She tried to remember some of the training mikos had received in interpreting dreams, but there was nothing that vague about a former dead guardian predicting great evils in the ruins of home. Filia buried her head under the pillow. "Karyuuou-sama," she whispered pleadingly, "haven't I put up with enough of this darkness and danger cra..Oof!"
Her toes had hit a suspicious lump in the bedroll, and she froze. "Mice?" she whispered, tucking her bare feet further up into the protection of her nightdress. Then an almost wolfish grimace touched her mouth. "I am a Gold Dragon...I am a survivor....I helped defeat a Demon King from a parallel world.....I can handle mice!"
Filia reached over, bunching the quilt between stiff, but determined fingers. With a quick tug, she brought the quilt up and over her head, muffling a shriek as she trumbled backwards ingloriously.
"Ouch," a muted voice complained from the end of the bed. "Your toenails cutted me."
Filia removed the quilt from her head. "Val-kun? Why are you in here? You're not a baby anymore, you're a big man remember? You have your own bed."
Valgarv - former champion of angst, now a sullen toddler - glared up at Filia defiantly. "Bad dream, Filia-mama," he pouted, sticking a thumb in his mouth, a habit Filia had tried time and time again to break him of. "Bad dream."
Filia opened her mouth to reprimend him, then shut it abruptly as her neck prickled again. "What bad dream, Val-kun?" she asked carefully.
Val climbed over Filia's legs, and arranged himself in her lap, tucking the folds of her nightdress around his small body to form a kind of tent. He put his worn, but beloved stuffed dragon, Draga, in the crook of his left arm, and popped his right thumb into his mouth, as Filia watched expectantly.
"Big man came and talked to me," he explained around his thumb. "Said bad things were gonna happen in the night, and everything was gonna go dark. He talked funny."
Filia stared as a chill swept over her. "What man, Val-kun? Did you know him?"
Val nodded sleepily. "It was the man that sometimes comes and talks to me at night, but I can't always get what he says. His trenchcoat flaps in the wind a lot. It makes a funny noise."
Filia's mouth went dry, and she held Val for a long time as he slept.
General Sherra soaked in her bathtub, and brooded. She had woken up alone, in her own bed none the less, and with a splitting headache besides. She groaned, her hands automatically going to tug at her long hair, hanging loose over her shoulders. Why should she bother getting both herself and Dynast-sama drunk if it never came to anything? Damn servants! Maybe she should try a wide-range stupor spell the next time. Overwhelming Serenity perhaps. She lifted her hands, watching the scented water slide off in little rainbow hued beads, and moved her fingers through the motions of spellcasting. Maybe then she would get somewhere.
She toweled off the excess water once she was out of the tub, and brushed her long hair, lashing at it with the comb as if she meant to teach it a lesson, frowning at herself in the silver mirror. Round green eyes and long blue hair, her only good points. Everything else was either too long, too pointed, or too flat. She sent a malovolent glare down at the perky breasts that refused to age and round past fifteen, the age she had died.
Sherra had grown up on the streets of Atlas some six hundred years ago. Her mother, probably one of the back street prostitutes that called out their trade in hoarse, high voices like dueling cats, had left Sherra with old Mistress Prouty when she was three days old. Raised by the old woman, whose hands were so mishapen with the gout that she could no longer sell her wares, Sherra soon learned that open pockets and careless people gave breakfast, lunch and dinner, with maybe a few coppers to save for a doll. She padded through snow and mud barefoot back to the little wooden shanty where she stayed with the old woman who told her stories of goblins, demons, and the Five who would someday end the world.
When Sherra had been thirteen, the old woman died, leaving Sherra two possessions in the world - her name, Musume, (Mistress Prouty was never long on imagination) and the wooden shack, which blew down in the Blizzard of '87. Sherra had retreated to a building alcove for shelter, and as the nights grew colder and colder, she grew weaker and weaker.
She died, curled into a ball for warmth on the side of a building in the snow. The last thing she saw with human eyes was a tall man bending over her, smiling.
Brushed, braided, and dressed in her good blues, Sherra went to converse with her Lord.
Dynast Grausherra was seated bolt upright in the great chair in his private chambers, twirling an empty champagne glass in his left hand. His right hand absently sketched gestures in the air as he conversed in low tones with a servant who hovered respectfully nearby. The servant bowed obediantly, and left, taking the empty glass as it dimmed into thin air. Sherra waited a few moments, then crossed to bow in front of the dais.
"Sit, my Sherra," he murmured regally, waving her to a place at his feet. "I trust you are wondering why I have summoned you at such an early hour?"
"It was one of my first thoughts as I was summoned, my Lord," Sherra murmured, unconciously lapsing into Dynast's speech pattern.
"Ah," Dynast replied, a slight smile touching his thin lips. At his feet, Sherra watched his face carefully. Dynast rose gracefully, and went to the window, looking out at the ice and snow that was his domain. He lifted a birdlike hand, and placed it against the silk tapesty, stroking it absently, his grey eyes seamless as mirrors as they watched the world. He smiled again, and turned back to Sherra.
"My general, I trust you know of the matter of Lina Inverse, do you not?"
Sherra stared at him. Of course she knew, even the changlings in their cradles knew of Lina Inverse! Strange business afoot, she decided. "Why, my Lord, do you ask?"
Dynast walked around the room, lifting a hand to brush a tapesty as he came past, pausing in front of Sherra. She looked up as he looked down.
"My Sherra, I believe I have personally solved this bane of the Mazoku. Last night, I found a most interesting spell, a most intriguing one, a way to seal some forms of power off in certain, shall we say, dimensional pathways. I believe that I have managed to temporarily strip our problem of her powers." Sherra's throat tightened with a wild, aching joy. "Sir? Is that why we were drunk last night?"
Dynast smiled down at her, and actually extended a slender hand to help her rise to her feet. Sherra took it, trying to burn the feeling of the slim, cool hand in hers into her skin for the rest of eternity. Dynast and Sherra smiled at each other for a few moments more. Then Dynast frowned slightly and withdrew his hand, turning again to the bleak landscape outside.
"My Sherra, one problem has been solved, but I fear new complications have arisen from this. My work has most likely rendered Lina Inverse harmless, but when I cast my spell, I sensed a disturbance-as if I had interrupted another spell in its workings. This morning, I scryed for Lina Inverse-and she is not to be found on the mortal plane anymore."
"Not on the mortal plane? Is she, perhaps.."
"Dead? No. I sensed her presence in a far more unlikely place. She is presently, I believe," Dynast lifted his head to gaze at the ceiling as he talked. Sherra did the same, scanning the marblework as if it held something wonderful, golden and precious. "I believe I undoubtedly sensed her in the ethers of the Astral Plane."
Sherra's mouth opened, and then she shut it again, in little gulps like a fish. "Astral
Plane? Was she teleporting there somehow-to seek another Claire Bible, perhaps?" she sniffed.
"Even so, she shouldn't have the knowledge to be able to teleport to the Astral Plane
alone!"
"No. I sense a third hand in this business. Someone else's hand moves against me, because that was most definitely not the girl's power teleporting her. And I suspect my wayward youngest sibling has now stuck her claws into this mess, for apparently she seems to have sent her very odd child to retrieve Lina Inverse."
Sherra stomach tightened, and she ran her fingers over the hem of her tunic to pleat it between damp fingers. "Xelloss?? Xelloss was there as well?"
Dynast's fine features twisted into a grimace. "Most definitely. He has a rather... obvious Astral presence, does he not?"
Sherra's lip trembled for a moment. "And where do I come into this, my Lord?" she said quietly, lifting her chin.
Dynast studied her for a moment, as if seeing some new facet of herself come into the light for the first time. "My General, I wish you to hunt for me."
"Hunt what quarry?"
"The Beastmaster, the friends of Lina Inverse, anyone who stands in our way," Dynast said with a sweeping gestures, brushing crumbles off a shelf. "My dream is near fulfillment - my desire is at hand." Dynast's voice was steady, but a fine thread of emotion ran underneath.
Sherra looked down for several moments. When she raised her face again, her mouth was dry, her face set. "My Lord, I will hunt for you."
Dynast smiled wryly. "My good girl."
Sherra stood at the top of the hill that marked the edge of Dynast Grausherra's domain. With one hand, she rubbed the edge of Duofolger, once her most faithful servant, now her most trusted sword. "Come on, my dear," she said, watching the horizon as if for several small figures, waiting, expectant.
"We hunt."
* Karyuuou no Shinden-Fire Dragon King Temple. Filia was a Miko (priestess) to Karyuuou there.