In and out of dreams

The life of the Foreseer is cold. It is lonely. It is days spent with his head buried in books, taking only glimpses of the world beyond his Tower. Look too long, and forbidden thoughts of freedom cross his mind. They anger his keeper. 

That is something the Foreseer does his best to avoid. Thoughts of the grass beyond these stone walls are meaningless, they will never come to pass. 

What he has left is his vast library, his dreams, and the lone pot of ja******ine on the ramparts. 

Tonight he can’t sleep. 

It’s different here, a place unlike anything the Foreseer has experienced in his own reality. Stone buildings reach higher than the sun, blocking all light down in the city. 

Yet he is familiar with this place. 

He stalks these streets, and the purpose with which he walks keeps passerbys from meeting his dark eyes. This dream he’s had before, he knows what will happen. 

Down an alleyway, through a darkened door, a hallway, and at the end there is a window, the lights of the traffic outside illuminating a figure standing there. A girl. 

With a swift, practiced movement of his hand, the Foreseer conjures a dagger of ice, and approaches silently. 

Before he can hear her scream, he wakes, gasping, and his fingers clutch at his own chest, as if to ease the sudden ache in his heart. It hurts. And the sounds of agony still ring in his ears.

“Stop!” He pleads, to no one. 

This is how he finds himself atop the tower once again this night, gazing up at the moon in hopes it might bring him some comfort. 

His palm presses flat against the stones, freezing to the touch, and ever so slightly, he leans forward, letting his eyes drop to the ground below. 

The thought is only a flicker. He is practiced at controlling such things, but for just one moment, he looks down and wonders…

Perhaps that’s the only way.

In an instant he is rigid, crying out in pain. It feels like his chest has collapsed, and as he shouts, he cannot inhale. His eyes go wide, and his fingernails scrape across the bricks as the strength leaves him and his body fails, sending him to his knees. 

“Astra! You know I would not… Would not have done anything so foolish, please! It was only a moment of weakness, please, it won’t happen again! I swear to you, Astra… My Lord, please!”

The words are labored, and slow, his breath becoming visible in the night air as his limbs freeze over, biting into him just like the thorns that come slithering up his ankles. 

This weakness he shows is reserved only for Astra, he would permit no other living being to see him so ******all. And so he cries as the thorns follow the ice up his calves, thighs, stomach and chest, spreading from there to his arms and fingers and lips and eyes. 

Until his body is no longer his own. Frozen, trapped, but for the shuddering gasps and whimpers of the pain he must endure for his disallowed thoughts of freedom from this place. For the pain he causes in his dreams for reasons he does not understand. For the lives he’s lived that he can no longer remember, outside of glimpses in his fields of ja******ine. 

The thorns drag him from the top of the tower, all the way down to his sickly, beautiful throne, tearing his clothes and skin until he is covered in a mess of red blood, hundreds of cuts and scratches covering every inch of him. 

When his arms are locked in the cuffs above him, as he is seated in the chair, he is barely aware, nor would he care. In front of him, shards of ice form from frigid air around them. Twenty, he thinks, possibly more.

The Foreseer tries to breathe, to endure, as he must, but the first shard to his chest is shocking in the agony it causes him. His trapped arms tense into fists and he cannot stop the cry from his lips, teetering into a whimper as the first dagger lodges itself deep into his heart.

Then comes the second. As searing as the first, and the chains rattle. The thorns wrapped tight around him bite deeper and deeper as he arches, and by the third, he is nearly writhing just to distract his mind from the inevitable. 

Thorns catch on his jaw, wrapped tight around his throat as he screams, on the insides of his knees and thighs as his shoes push against the floor, his animal body and mind fighting for escape.

He knows there will be no such thing.

He knows that this is what he must deserve.

As the third shard pierces his chest, his vision goes white, and his voice leaves him, dropped open in a silent scream, though his body still fights, tightened fists pulling hard enough to bruise. He can feel blood dripping from his wrists, but cannot be sure if it was there before or not. 

Before his vision clears, he is back in the dream that brought him here. That girl is there, facing the window, looking outside. But this time, she turns, as if hearing his approach, the corners of her lips turned into an easy ******ile. 

Before he can make out any details of her face, the fourth shard joins the rest, forcing a ******all whimper from his empty lungs, shuddering with the cold all around and inside of him, and he is returned to the present moment. 

The Foreseer is unknowable, he is wise to the secrets of the universe, to the futures and fates of the people in this world around him. Except for his own. Every bit of his life, his future and past are a jumbled mess of moments that he is unable to make sense of. 

But here, alone in the cold with none but Astra watching over him, he is a boy. A weak, spineless coward who would dare to think he could ever disobey his Lord, would dare to think even oblivion would set him free from his duty. His punishment. No, death would be too easy. Too painless. 

Dark hair covers his eyes as he slumps forward, jerking as 5, 6, 7, shards of ice pierce his heart, pinning him back in his chair, forcing him to sit upright.

He grunts and his breath shakes as the cold takes him, forcing his submission to the angered God.

“Hah…. Nnnn-ahh, please forgive me, Astra. I will not disobey you again.” The Foreseer pleads into the empty hall. 

“Do not make promises you cannot keep, Foreseer. You are weak. You are human. These two truths exist hand in hand. Accept them.”

Just as he raises his tired eyes, ten more daggers of ice shoot through the air and into his chest. 

The Foreseer sobs once, twice, three times, and the world around him goes dark.