Dragon Aster Trilogy

25: WOODS STALKER



Sybl could feel her mind drift after a forgotten voice, trying to escape the deafening silence of the emptiness she was left in. She remembered wanting the voice to stay, to continue to tell her that she wasn’t alone and that there was someone out there thinking about her. Who cared what her future had in store. But there was no way to keep it at the time.

She opened her eyes to a memory in the woods, where she lay on the ground at the back of her foster home. The sunlight that did break through the trees was warm, and the smell of nature around her was fresh and free, but with it came the feeling that something was watching her.

Rubbing her eyes, she looked to the trees for what was hiding from the sun’s rays, and found a pair of red eyes looking back at her. It might have been a black wolf if its eyes and ears weren’t more like of a large cat, with massive paws to hold its equally large claws. Its face was like the high-arched nose of a bull terrier. Its long, but thick tail twitched back and forth behind it, as if to balance itself against her noticing it.

Sybl scrambled to her feet to run, but the creature came at her with an uncanny speed that threw her against the ground. Then it pinned her there. She twisted to try and get free of its grip, as the monster dissipated into a dark mist. She looked up to where Kas pinned her down with his knee on her chest and his hands on her arms.

She calmed down as she tried to compile it all while looking up at his red eyes. They never revealed anything to what he was thinking under his dark bangs. Sybl quickly glanced around for the monster, fearing it was still around, before looking back at him as it all began to make a scary kind of sense. He was a phelan somnus, which meant he could also be very real in the world she was in now. “You never told me what you are.”

Whatever he had taken from her thoughts for himself, it was enough to get his weight off of her to let her sit up.

“You still do not remember me.”

She remembered thinking him to be a relative of her foster mother who had arrived from Germany, despite her not expecting it. Or a possible neighbor from some faraway house lost in the woods. As beautiful as her foster mother’s house was, it was also in the middle of nowhere, where the next house was a good half an hour walk away. The place was more open to be invaded by an alien than an actual human visitor from the same planet. Little did she know then how right she was.

But Kas didn’t say anything else, and as the minutes passed it was becoming more and more unnerving. It was her dream, and she had control over it now so why not use it to get the answers she wanted? “Why are you here, phelan somnus?”

His red eyes became darker by his pupils, with the clouds overhead that started to screen out much of the sunlight. “I was meant to find you.”

“What for?”

“You are the reincarnation of Asil, the Asterian Caelestis.”

Sybl remembered what she had read from the Texts and laughed. He was a rather good actor to keep a straight face and say that about her, while looking to mean it. She had been called a lot of things before, but never a goddess or anything remotely close to it. But as much as she was getting a kick out of toying with him, he looked hurt by her reaction.

Just like in the past version of the memory, she had stopped laughing on sight of the sheathed long sword that hung from his belt. She decided to read a Text next on how to dream equipped with a weapon, if she got out of this one alive.

“I would never hurt you,” Kas snapped randomly at her. “Yet those dragons have brainwashed you into thinking I am the enemy. They are the enemy lying in wait for their chance to throw the world into chaos.”

Sybl was left stunned for a moment as she thought she had her thoughts in order, but on looking at the silver marking on her right arm that she shared with him, something was clearly leaking free against her willpower.

He took his sheathed sword off of his belt and held it out for her to take. “Take it.”

She didn’t like being told what to do, but Sybl already knew how long one of their arguments could last over the stupidest of things, and took it. It couldn’t hurt to have a sword if the argument escalated. She pulled the blade slightly out of its sheath and looked at her reflection, before tilting it towards him and looking for his. Only there was none. “You’re a spirit...”

“A Dreamwalker,” he corrected.

“Dreamwalking is not allowed.”

“Why not?” Kas asked.

“Because it puts you in unnecessary danger.”

“You would be a risk worth taking.”

“That’s not what you said before,” Sybl retorted.

“What lie would you have heard me say when we first met, Asil?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Here I had some hope that if you were on Aster, the Great Dragon might have returned something of your memories, but you are still the same—” He stopped, as her blue eyes gave him a cold stare to pierce free the rest of his words.

“Go on, say it.”

“Human,” he whispered in turn.

“Well, I’m so sorry to continue to disappoint you. Now get the hell out of my dream, so it can stop being such a nightmare!” She threw his sword at his feet and turned to leave the woods, heading back to the main house.

He ran after her and caught her arm, holding her back.

“Let go of me!”

Kas held her arm tightly and rubbed the silver marking on her with his thumb. “You lied to me when you said you never wanted to see me again.”

“No I didn’t.” Sybl pulled away from him and swatted his next attempt to touch her.

“I am coming for you, because I can feel that you still love me.”

“Then you’re wrong.”

Kas stood up straighter, defiant to her words against him. “What is it that you fear? Me? Or the idea that someone would love you? I am real, Sybl.”

“I’m not who you think I am, and I don’t love you! If you are in this nightmare with me for real, then it only proves just how much of a sick puppy you really are for not giving it up already!” She pulled away from his hands when he caught her again, only to wake with a gasp to the smell of something burning.