The Dream

Xavier

Everything was black. Only black. The same darkness that lived in my dreams, or rather nightmares, every night.

"Kalakrath."

"My, my, the honorable Captain Xavier Nightrider of the First Regiment. No greetings to your old friend?" A sardonic voice drawled.

I stared back at the darkness stoically.

"Do I really need to say it? Just turn your body over to me, it will be much easier. Let's have some fun. Let's kill some people."

"No." I bluntly asserted. I felt Kalkarath push against my mental barriers. Over ten years, I had built an iron sound defense. However, I felt another force push as well. I was losing. I strained to push back, trying to halt their advance into my mind.

"Haha. It seems like my Three Kings have finally found you."

"It won't change anything." I said, straining.

"Tsk, tsk. Xavier, you are a strong human, but you are human. An insect to us. It is only inevitable that you fall to my will."

I struggled for ages. My mind was battered, barely staying in control. Suddenly, the second force disappeared. Seizing this opportunity, I pushed back with all my remaining might. I woke up.

I saw Persephone grabbing a robed figure. I lunged up to help her. The struggle was brief. Persephone grabbed its robes. The figure quickly chanted some words and melted into a shadow, leaving the robes behind. I recognized the spell. The figure was long gone by now. All I could do was sigh. Rummaging through the robes, I found that he left behind a small, red leather book. I picked it up and thumbed through a few pages. Persephone sat next to me, and looked over my shoulder.

"That is interesting. It is not in standard arcana. Do you know what language it is?"

"No." A lie. It was in infernal, the language of demons. I knew how to read it. The title of the book was The Hellmouth. I feared what I would find inside it, so I quickly threw it off to one side. Mordred and Solskin burst in the door just then, and I forgot about it temporarily in the commotion until Mordred also noticed the book. Looking at it, his face scrunched up in confusion.

"I have seen this somewhere before. I can't place from where."

"Well, we should still try to chase them down." Solskin bluntly suggested, ignoring every word that came out of Mordred's mouth. He seemed more driven and happier than usual.

"Of course!" Mordred exclaimed. "I remember seeing a similar book on Ash's desk. When I inquired after it, he told me that it was a book on alternate dimensions, pertinent to his current studies."

"We should find him then." Solskin stated.

"Well, as I have already arranged to meet him, why don't we all go?"

I said nothing as everyone else expressed their approval. I knew that Ash was probably one of the Three Kings and I should have warned them, but I remained quiet, afraid of revealing what I was.

Mordred

We couldn't fall asleep again. We stayed in Xavier's room and talked about what to do. I was looking over my spellbook for the first time in a while. The recent events had worried me to the point where I was preparing to have more offensive spells available. By the time I managed to memorize one, it was quite late. The spell I picked up was highly experimental. It involved sending someone to a hostile dimension temporarily to cause physical and psychological harm. I only knew of it because of my own experiments in getting home.

Day approached and the entire group was still gathered in Xavier's room. Xavier stayed up last night, contemplating something. Persephone had fallen asleep on the floor and Solskin was outside in the courtyard energetically swinging his sword like some sort of buffoon.

The week passed us by uneventfully. The entire group was nervous, weapons always at the ready, but nothing happened. I constantly tweaked the spell, which I called "Banish" for obvious reasons. After practicing on small objects, I was confident that I would be able to use it in a battle. Additionally, I discovered that by increasing the length of my invocation, I could prolong the duration for which the object remained in the other dimension. This breakthrough excited me. If I could further my control over the spell and send people to a specific location, I might be able to go back!