Nightmare

I am back here again, how many times is this already, ten, twenty?

It will just repeat as always, I am once again in the keep where I first arrived, back pressed against the wall with my eyes looking straight at the only entrance.

The hall is still full of chairs and the fire is out so I should be in perfect darkness, yet I am not, the whole world has a purple tinge that allows me to see.

This is not the first time this happens, it's alway the same dream, the same process. I just stay here watching, unable to move. It will be any second now, it always comes for me.

I can do nothing but wait, stare at the entrance and try to wake up. I managed to wake up before, yet today seems to be too late. I can hear it now, walking slowly towards the gate, hooves hitting the stone.

The purple light coming from outside gets covered by a big shape, still unidentifiable at this distance, i know what it is though, seen it before.

And just as always it slowly closes in on me, step by step, i don't understand how something of that size can be so silent.

When it reaches me I can feel the heat emanating from it's body, hotter than the fire. It just stands there for a few moments, watching me, probably thinking what to do.

It does not take long for it to act, its head, bigger than my torso, closes in on me, then the mouth opens, there are pieces of rotten meat between the crooked teeth, the smell is nauseating, and yet I can not move, only watch.

Before it bites my head off it seems to change its mind and backs off lightly. Here it comes.

The monster did not eat me, even if it could easily do so, no, it's evil, and I am easy prey, it will hunt for food. And so it brings its mangled limb towards me, one of the three claws stretched as far as it can, and it marks me.

The claw pushes lightly against my back, as if a friend patted you on a shoulder, a simple movement yet it cuts right through my flesh. I can only feel a slight itch.

Then to my surprise the dream does not end, it usually just stops here, the beast marks me then it turns around and leaves and i wake up, it should've ended.

Yet it doesn't, the monster did not leave this time, it just backs up a couple steps and lays down next to me, as if watching over my sleeping figure. Even when crouched it is easily twice as big as I am.

What is going on? I had just gotten used to this nightmare, I've been seeing it for weeks now, ever since I settled down in the mansion.

Why is it staring at me? ''Wake up, just wake up already''. Wait did i just speak. I could never speak before. The creature seems to react to my words, its head slightly moving, the beady eyes looking straight into my own.

''You can hear me can't you?''. No answer, obviously. Yet it reacted again, its snout flared as if taking a deep breath.

''Is this a dream, or are you trying to communicate with me?'' I am very calm right now, after all I have seen this thing almost daily. It does not scare me that much anymore. Of course if it was right in front of me in person I could no longer say this.

The beast does not react this time so we just stare at each other, eye to eye, for what feels like hours. Our staring contest is disturbed by a caw, the sound that a typical crow makes. It has been a while since i heard it, there are not many crows around Westerngrad.

The strange thing is that the beast reacts to the noise, lifts its head up and looks over to the entrance, its body is in the way so I can not see what it is looking at.

The sound of crows continues, slowly getting louder and louder. The beast abruptly stands up and charges outside, knocking the chairs out of the way, it leaves a trail of destruction in its wake yet I don't take my eyes off it.

Now staring at the gate I can see outside again, the trees were all covered by birds, they did not look black but purple due to the odd coloring off my dream. At least I am back at staring, only this time it's my eyes against thousands of birds. For some reason it's more unsettling than staring at the beast.

At least it did not last long, I could hear the creature roar in the distance, the same horrifying roar it gave me before, only this time it was not at me. When the roar ended I could feel the ground shake, all the crows took flight from the trees leaving me alone once again, I woke up shortly after.

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''Another nightmare, only this time it was different, something changed''. I get up from my bed located on the third floor of my new mansion and move towards my office, sit in my chair and look out the window at the ocean.

The giants did a beautiful job, they covered 2 of the 4 entrances and broke down the walls that formed separate houses.

I was left with a square three story high mansion, made of a pleasing arrangement of stone and brick with vines lightly growing on the sides.

As for the inside it is mostly empty. I decided to use the first floor for official business, this floor had nothing in it, the second floor was for my guards to use, they had their own sleeping area with a fireplace and giant beds. The third floor would be my personal space. This floor had 4 entrances but I had the workers seal all but 1, which was fitted with a solid wooden door that could only be opened with a key.

This is as safe as you can get without using magic. The fact that only I can access this floor allowed me to hide the coin. I took the classical route and hid it behind a painting, in a hole in the wall.

It's been around 15 days since i visited Olans tavern and had a meal prepared by his wife. It was splendid, she could easily be a world renowned chef, or so I think at least, maybe not having eaten anything for a long time made me slightly biased.

My coin is also starting to run quite thin. I only have about 3000 left after I purchased the furniture for my room, I may have splurged on it but it was needed.

While i do have the whole floor to myself, it was still a wide open place with nothing in it, and being the third floor meant that there were very few windows, i only had several small ones showing outside and larger inner ones pointing to the inner courtyard. So I decided to have a part of the wall converted into a window.

Now the wall on the western side, the side that faces the ocean, has a great window on it through which I can see the water. This is due to most buildings only having two floors so the third floor on my mansion allows me to see above all houses.

Contrary to what I expected, making this window was very cheap, that is because it is not 1 wide piece of glass, but dozens of small pieces kept together by a thin metal frame. The transparency is great, not perfect but pretty good for hand made glass.

The chair i am currently sitting on was custom made for me and it probably is my most expensive possession, except for the mansion of course. I had the chair fitted with soft leather and filled with expensive materials, it was as close I could get to an armchair.

My desk was beautifully made, even wider than my bed and created from a solid piece of wood with the use of magic. I could not even push it, that's how heavy it is, it needed a whole 4 giants to get up here.

That is what my living space looks like right now, several fireplaces, a shabby bed, an armchair, beautiful wooden desk, some paintings here and there,to distract from the empty walls, and a window that allows me to gaze at the ocean.

To think that little more than a month ago i was half dead on a healers bed, how life changes sometimes.

Back to the main point, the change in my nightmare, the appearance of the purple birds and the monster being affected by them.

''I think i know how this happened'' For once i had answers.

I place my right hand on the hand rest of the armchair and start tapping my fingers rhythmically on the soft leathery material. After a few seconds the darkness recedes as it is replaced by a purple light.

From the spot I was tapping a shining purple bird materializes, it takes flight and does a round around my desk before settling down next to my head, perched on the chair.

''If magic scares you, then i just need to learn more.''

The bird as if understanding my words takes flight towards the window, it looks like it would crash into the glass yet it does not happen, it passes through the window and reaches outside where it starts slowly disintegrating into purple motes of light.

''I'm getting rid of you even if it's the last thing i do''.