Bog Standard Isekai

It was Marksi who noticed first that something strange was going on. He jumped down off of Obedience and ran ahead, straight into the open gates of the oddly prison-shaped compound.

“Hey! Hold up, Marksi! They don’t know you here!” said Brin.

“Have no fear. There are many among us who remember your companion and the rest have been forewarned. Marksi is welcome here,” said Galan.

Brin nodded but still bit his lip in worry as Marksi turned up the camouflage and disappeared.

Brych noticed next. His horse stopped moving, and he stared forward with unfocused eyes. “I thought… I thought it might be machinery, or a giant clock. It’s… It’s…”

Galan paused as if he’d been expecting this. “You need not enter now.”

Brych blinked twice and then shook his head. “No. No, I’ll come.”

“What is it? What do you see?” Govannon asked, but Brych just shook his head.

“You will all see, and soon,” said Galan.

From the curious looks of the other members of the Lance, he could tell that none of them knew what was in store except for Cid and Hedrek, who’d been with the Order of the Long Sleep from even before the war.

Brin had an idea of what it could be. There was a clue in the name of the Order. And then there was something Galan had told him the night they had met. “My Order is reclusive by nature, but not secretive.” They hadn’t really made much of an effort to keep this a secret, and from the bits and pieces he’d picked up here and there from other members of the Order and from Galan’s lectures on their history, he knew what this must be.

He decided not to ruin the surprise for the other members of the Lance who hadn’t figured it out yet.

They rode across the drawbridge, and through the gates. Although the perforated walls hadn’t hid the overall structure, now that they were through he was surprised at the number of people who were out in the field. There were [Knights] still training out in the grounds, illuminated by spotlights, and he saw a family crossing from the main fortress towards the line of homes that were snug up against the far wall.

Pages came to take their horses, and then a man in decorative armor approached. He [Inspected] as Sir Mercher, a [Knight of Memory] and was flanked by a ceremonial-looking armor guard.

“Sir Galan. You’ve returned!”

“I have! Is Sir Tudur in residence?

“He is not, as he is called to duties abroad. You have command here,” said Sir Mercher.

“I’ve brought new brothers with me. Those who have not yet obtained the dream,” said Galan.

“Then come this way to your rest! Brothers, come!” The words themselves didn’t seem to be ceremonial, but there was a clear tradition or custom here. Brin was just glad that his part of it didn’t require any recited phrases or movements that no one had prepared him for. Sir Mercher seemed content to lead them into the stronghold.

Inside, it was warm. Even with his lower Vitality, Brin had the ability to shrug off the weather in all but the most extreme cases, and he knew that it was the same for the rest of them here. It didn’t need to be warm, but it was, and that made all the difference.

The furnaces were in the center of the room, big iron stoves that radiated the heat outward. Then circular tables spread out haphazard around them. Brin’s Lance were led to split up into two such tables, and before long, servants brought trays of food and pitchers of wine.

It was another comfort Brin realized he hadn’t noticed he’d been missing–actually decent food. The fare at the monastery was plain and simple stuff with little variety. Brin had taken to playing a game where he’d skip a meal or two to see if the hunger could make it taste better. The food on the road hadn’t been much better, and the less said about the food they’d eaten during the war the better.

The Order brought them roasted meat falling off the bones, warm bread straight out of the oven, sweet and savory pastries, and trays of fruit. There was also a casserole made of a stringy green vegetable that Cid and Hedrek went for immediately and the rest of the men didn’t quite trust. Something regional to Olland? Brin tried a bit and probably would’ve liked it a lot if there weren't so many more tempting dishes on offer.

One woman in a green dress placed a large roasted fowl on the table where Galan sat with some Cid and a few other officers, and then bent over to whisper something in his ear. Brin sat up straight with surprise when the woman pecked Galan on the cheek, squeezing his shoulder in a hug from the back, before stepping away. It was only when she cast his table a single glance over her shoulder that he realized–that was Lyssa.

He totally hadn’t recognized her. For one, she was in a dress when he’d only ever seen her in uniform, but also because of the way she held herself. There was none of the rigid severity in her manner that he was used to from her. She seemed eerily at peace with herself.

Hedrek noticed him noticing and said, “So the viper is well and truly tamed.”

“Maybe that’s what she wants us to think,” said Brin. The both spoke extremely quietly, just in case, even though only a [Watchful Knight] would be able to hear them over the din.

The mood was loud and jovial, and for once it didn’t seem like the excited energy of the knights-at-arms was liable to cause any problems. Brin had always been on edge when he brought the Lance to a public house or restaurant during their patrols because they were so much stronger than everyone else. Roughhousing or even sudden movements were liable to break some random villager’s arm or destroy the tables and chairs, so he’d had to be strict about everyone’s behavior. This place, on the other hand, was built for [Knights], and the men could spread out and cut loose without the fear of accidentally starting an incident with the locals.

Marksi feasted and caroused, fitting in perfectly as if he never doubted for a second that he was a full member of the Order just like any of the rest of them. For their part, the fellow knights accepted him without complaint and laughed at his antics or threw him bits of meat to catch in his mouth.

Many others of the Order joined in to swap tales with the new arrivals, and Brin talked a lot about their adventures during their patrols before the invasion of Arcaena. The knights he spoke with mostly told stories much older than that, from wars Brin had never heard of.

He ate until he was full, and then spent the next two hours picking at his food slowly, adding something else the moment he felt like there was enough room.

Eventually, conversation began to die down. For most of them, at least. Hedrek always seemed to have one more story in him, but Brin started to feel his eyelids growing heavy and he wondered how rude it would be to rest his head on the table.

About the time he decided to try it for real, Galan stood and called for everyone’s attention.

“The hour is late and our new brothers must rest. We bid you come, see our victory and our duty, then rest, and become our brothers in truth.”

Brin met the eyes of the other members of the Lance, none of them quite knowing what was going on. Cid met his questioning glance with a simple quirk of the lips, while Hedrek looked quite pleased to know something that Brin didn’t.

They followed Galan through the back doors, and came to a staircase, where they went down one level. Brin was taken by a pair of servants who took him to a room with a bath. They helped him remove the armor. He didn’t need the help, but allowed them anyway because stopping a servant from doing his job just made it awkward for everyone.

The bath was cold, and the servants acted as if they intended to stay with him and scrub his back. He put his foot down and told them to leave, and then took a very short bath. He made sure to scrub thoroughly, just in case they came back in and decided that he’d missed a spot and would need to start over.

His clothes were removed and he was given plain woolen robes, not too different from what he’d worn at the monastery. When he left the bathroom, he was wide awake and extremely curious about what would happen next. They hadn’t told him anything.

He met the other men of the Lance in the hall, and then Galan led them farther down. They came to a spiral staircase and went down, down, down into the depths. He could’ve had a directed thread count the stairs or estimate the distance if he cared, but he didn’t. He just knew it was a long way down because every so often the stairway would open up into a waystation where armed guards defended the stairwell from anything trying to come back up.

He had the weird feeling that he was the prisoner, that this was all an elaborate trap and the Order was going to lock him in irons. He knew it was completely irrational, but it was more and more clear the further they went down that something was imprisoned here, and he wasn’t wearing the clothing of a warden.

Finally, they came to the end. There was a short hall and then a pair of tall double doors. Marksi, who’d been admirably patient up to this point, jumped forward and slammed against the doors, trying to wedge them open, but they held shut. He looked up at Galan and chirped insistently.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Galan said, “When I first stood where you stand now, there was a good deal of explanation and discussion here. But in recent times we’ve found that all irrelevant. There is nothing I can say now that wouldn’t be better shown. Behind these doors lies your legacy and your duty. You shall see.”

He pushed the doors open easily, to reveal a vast cavern.

There, in the cavern, there was a dragon.

Even though it was dead, and it thought it looked nothing like Marksi or the Hidden Guardian, there was no mistaking the fact that this was a dragon. The primal fear of prey before a predator froze Brin in his tracks, locking his body down completely.

The creature was enormous, the size of the giant undead dragon that Lothar had slain, but even more twisted and horrible. Its body was flat and wide with long legs and wings, and everything was covered with spikes and claws. It wasn’t always obvious where body ended and limbs began; the whole thing was a tangled mess. More of a landscape than a recognizable body, a blighted land where miasma rose like fog from the ground.

It bore the evidence of terrible, fatal wounds that should’ve left no room for doubt. Ballista bolts the size of ship masts still pierced the dragon straight through in places, and most of all the chest and ribs had been opened to reveal its heart which had been cleanly sliced in two. Despite all that, Brin had the eerie feeling that the dragon could jump to its feet at any moment if it wanted.

Most of the flesh on the head had been stripped away to reveal a bare skull. The crown had been bashed in to reveal that the brain was gone, and yet the other half of the face that still had scales seemed to be as vital and ready for violence as anything Brin had ever seen. The eye socket was empty, but even so, whenever Brin wasn’t looking directly at the face he thought he saw its eyes flicking towards him.

Marksi padded carefully across the giant dragon. He sniffed its neck, and looking solemn and sorrowful, he curled up in the crook of the dragon’s neck and lay down against it.

Then something moved. The giant heart, cloven in two, shivered twice. Thump, thump.

Brin tried to speak, mouth suddenly dry, but it took three attempts before he got the words out. “Is it still alive?”

“It’s dead,” said Govannon, sounding like he was trying to convince himself more than anything. “It has to be.”

“Some say that Iaghaid did not die after that fated battle. That’s what they always say when they tell the story, right? Some say that he didn’t die, and that he’s only sleeping,” said Brin.

Galan nodded. “This way.”

He took them to a room with a barred door. There were rows of bunks inside, and a flush toilet. He appreciated that the Order had indoor plumbing, but he didn’t appreciate that this one was right out in the open like this. The room looked exactly like a prison cell, but it couldn’t be confused with one any longer. It was very clear that it locked from the inside.

Brin looked back at Marksi. “Is he going to be ok?”

“I will watch over him. And Iaghaid only rarely spawns darklings,” said Galan.

Feeling less than reassured, Brin went inside and picked a bunk. Cid closed, barred, and locked the door from the inside. Then he turned to address them.

“We will not speak from this point on. Know only that you are under no obligation to sleep.”

Brin was sure he wouldn’t be able to. The vision of the terrible dragon filled his imagination, growing ever larger now that it was out of sight. He kept imagining that it was looking directly at him through the wall, as if he could feel its malevolent interest bearing down on him.

He wondered how Marksi was feeling now. Here was a pinnacle example of dragonkind, maybe even greater than his mother the Hidden Guardian, and he was dead. Not only was he dead, there seemed to be an entire Order of [Knights] who’d been founded with the purpose of keeping him dead.

And if Marksi had been paying attention to the stories, then he must know that Iaghaid was evil. Sure, dragons couldn’t be called evil just for killing humans any more than humans were evil for killing goblins. But Iaghaid was worse than he needed to be. He’d attempted to clean old Edelor of the human race completely. He’d been vindictive and sadistic, and he’d had a habit of playing with his food.

But what would all that look like to a little dragon alone in a human’s world? Marksi had never shown any sign of being lonely. He bonded with humans just as easily as they bonded with each other. But was that because he didn’t have any other choice?

Shifting his thoughts to Marksi and away from the abominable dragon next door also shifted his emotions from terror to something more compatible with sleep. He felt himself drifting off, and didn’t resist it.

He was standing at the rim of a pit into hell. He couldn’t see what was outside the pit; that was testing the boundaries of the dream. And yes, this was a dream, or more properly, a nightmare.

He felt pretty strongly that the entire dream was on rails. He was supposed to pay attention to certain things and act in a certain way, but he’d long since passed the point where any dream or nightmare could control him. He allowed himself to be carried along into the dream, but only because he was curious to see where it went.

A pit into hell. And there at the bottom of the pit, the Order of the Long Sleep did battle with Iaghaid the Quiet.

He was well-named, because despite the shouts of anger and the clashing swords and firing of Skills, the dragon himself made not a sound. He fought quickly and intentionally, moving his gigantic body as if each limb were independent, twisting around charging [Knights] and flicking away Skill-charged arrows.

Brin recognized the figures who fought the dragon, but only vaguely. He’d seen them once before when they’d joined Galan in fighting off the undead army near Travin’s Bog. But he hadn’t had [Memories in Glass] back then, so he didn’t have a perfectly preserved memory of the event.

That big [Knight], the one who was always in the front and who led every charge, that must’ve been Sir Gwondul, the founder of the Order of the Long Sleep. He reminded Brin of Hedrek, in a way. He fought with unrestrained ferocity, always charging in recklessly as if the dragon posed him no danger. And then he justified that boldness with overwhelming might, battering himself out of the most precarious positions time and time again.

Fighting on his right hand was a [King] named Nim. Brin had begun to believe that Class focused on management and manipulation, but Nim fought with punishing strikes that made the laws of momentum and physics seem more like suggestions. How did a [King] come to be here, and what was his history with Sir Gwondul? Brin normally would be making a mental note to read the histories about it, but at the same time, he didn't really need to. The bonds of loyalty and friendship were plain as day, so what else really did he need to know?

And there was one more [Knight] that Brin recognized. Anwir was there with a bow, flinging a never-ending stream of arrows into the monster.

Iaghaid shook and shivered, and then a thousand black shadows, each the size of a man, slipped out from under his scales. They looked light and insubstantial, but they must have been stronger than they looked because they crashed into the line of [Knights] with the fury of a cavalry charge. It was open warfare as the Order rallied to drive them back while keeping the giant Iaghaid encircled so that he couldn’t sneak past and climb up out of the pit.

Brin watched the might of the men, their bravery and skill, and longed to be among them. And why shouldn’t he? The dream tried to press him back, but it had no power over him.

He jumped down. Anwir used [Knight’s Charge] to catch him in the air and pull him onto a balcony. They crashed hard, and the dream didn’t protect Brin from the very real feeling of slamming into the stone ground. Somehow, it did protect him from the curse, so he was at his best now and the hard landing barely phased him.

“I see that nothing has changed. You still don’t think there are any rules that apply to you,” said the [Knight of Arrows].

It was almost unwelcome to see Anwir again. He’d worked hard with priest Tew to come to terms with Anwir’s death, and now here he was again, opening up old wounds and shoving his failure back into his face. The guilt at being capable of even thinking he could regret seeing him mixed with the guilt of letting him die in the first place, leaving him speechless. “Anwir… I… I am so…”

Anwir held up a hand. “Don’t. Don’t belittle my sacrifice. I have no regrets.”

“You might not, but I do. I should have–”

Anwir smiled and shook his head. “Leave it. I am proud of the life I lived. I hope you can be as well.”

For whatever reason, Brin found he could accept that. Maybe he should’ve fought a little, tried harder to keep holding himself accountable, but he couldn’t fight the peace that began to settle back into his heart. A lot of what he was feeling now was because of the way of dreams, the way you could jump from thought to thought and feeling to feeling without any transition, but he’d have time to work out his true feelings later. He didn’t need to burden a dead friend with them now. He turned his eyes to the war below.

Brin stepped forward and Anwir kept his hand in place, to hold Brin back. “Neither shall you join our fight. It is not yet your time.”

Brin nodded and stepped to the edge of the balcony, more slowly this time, showing he just wanted to look down and watch. He had the mad urge to shake Anwir off and jump down; he thought he could do it. Anwir looked to be only as strong here as he’d been in life, though with no sign of wounds or weariness.

His questions won out. “What am I seeing? Are you revisiting a battle from the past?”

“No, Brin. This is happening, right now, right at this moment. Iaghaid is down there and he struggles to escape. We must prevent him from reaching the surface. If he escapes this dream, he may awaken.”

The battle below took on a new kind of urgency. The [Knights] were holding him for now, but they were always a moment away from disaster. One lucky strike, one moment of weakness, and the dragon would break through them and rise.

Anwir seemed to understand his thoughts. “It’s not so dire as it looks. Look. Look at the ground.”

Now he was watching, he saw that the bottom of the pit wasn’t stable at all. When one of the [Knight’s] scored a strong hit against the dragon, the bottom of the pit deepened. When the dragon struck a [Knight] in a way that should’ve killed or badly wounded him, the ground rose a bit. On the whole, the pit was sinking.

“You’re supposed to understand without being told, but since I’m here, I suppose I can narrate,” said Anwir. “This is the cost of the Skill you will now receive. When it is used, we abandon our duty here to aid you in the world of the living. Have no fear to use it; we will not come unless the enemy is buried deep enough that he cannot escape in the time we are away.”

Alert! You have been granted access to the Primary Cooldown Skill of the Order of the Long Sleep: Awaken the Sleeping Ones.

Warning: This Skill can only be used once a month.

Brin hoped he’d never use it. What if he spent it, and that doomed someone who needed it more? He’d only use this if he absolutely had no other choice.

“And this is your afterlife? You’re doomed to fight this dragon forever?” asked Brin.

Anwir reached down to pet Marksi, who’d appeared at some point. The dragonling was just as chubby here as he was in the waking world, and he gazed down at the war below with stars in his eyes. Brin wasn’t sure who the dragonling was rooting for; he was just glad Marksi wasn’t trying to get involved.

Anwir said, “No, not forever. Someday, someone will defeat Iaghaid for good, and then I’ll be free. Or perhaps the Order will fall and he’ll be unleashed into the world again. It makes no difference to me. Whether it’s a minute from now or a hundred thousand years, it’s the same. This is a brief stay of duty before I pass on to what comes next. When you join us, you’ll understand. Now please. Please, stay and watch. I want to rejoin the others.”

Brin nodded, and Anwir leapt off the balcony. He spent a [Knight’s Charge] in midair, speeding him downward to drive his metal arrow into the top of Iaghaid’s skull. The floor underneath shifted downwards.

Brin didn’t try to interrupt the dream again. Instead, he watched. He saw Classes he’d never dreamed about, Skills he’d never heard of, all used by experts at their peak to their greatest effectiveness. It was the single best education into the higher levels of combat that he’d ever, received and when the waking world called out to him again, he tried to refuse it.

But his mastery of dreams couldn’t keep him asleep when someone was shaking him. Regretfully, he woke.