After parting ways with the Champion, Milton met up with one of his least favorite people.

  “Arawn,” he greeted curtly as he met with the Shadow.

  The bearded man grunted when he saw him, “Still upset my faction was put in charge of handling the Champion, are you?”

  Milton merely glared, “If he grows to resent us, I’m blaming you.”

  “Oh?” the Shadow drew a long, curved knife, and used it to clean his nails, “and why’s that?”

  “You’re being far too harsh on him,” the scribe sniffed, “I’ve seen how his exhaustion and fatigue have been building. Void, he nearly had a panic attack when it was time for him to train with you!”

  “You know why I’ve been pushing him so hard,” Arawn grunted, not even looking his way, “who he is now can’t fulfill the role he’s to play in Lord Athanasius’s plans. He must become someone else. Someone willing. And the only way to do that is to break what was and reforge it into something new.”

  “He is already willing,” Milton argued.

  Arawn sneered, “Hardly. At best he’s tolerant of us. And barely at that. I didn’t think learning of the knife ears would have upset him so. It’s honestly pathetic that he took such offense on the creatures’ behalf. No, you and I both know that he’s not one of us. Not yet. I’ll make sure that changes.”

  “Your way goes too far, Arawn!”

  “Considering Lord Athanasius agreed with my plan, I think he begs to differ. And do you disagree with him?”

  “No,” Milton glared, “but remember he approved my part of the plan as well.”

  Arawn spat on the ground, “Your faction is too soft. Tell me dreamer, how has your end gone thus far? Have your meager discussions and lessons shown any progress in converting the Champion fully to our side?”

  “I need more time.”

  “Which you don’t have.” Arawn put his knife away. "If you don’t want to see him continue to suffer… if you really want to put a stop to my way of doing things, then you best convince him sooner rather than later. To be honest, I don’t really care whether my way works or yours. So long as the Champion fully embraces Lord Athanasius and the Dominion by the end of it.”

  “That’s a lie, Arawn.” Milton shook his head. “We both know you will stop at nothing to ensure your faction gets the glory of gaining the Champion’s full cooperation.”

  The Shadow grinned, not even bothering to try to deny the accusation.

  Milton didn’t know WHY Lord Athanasius put this man of all people in charge of ensuring the Champion’s loyalty. Nor did he understand why his lord approved of the Shadow’s twisted plan to do so. Even his most recent plea to force Arawn to be more lenient in the Champion’s training had been denied.

  Perhaps it was a test, for the Emperor had also approved of his own, more humane, plan to convert the Champion fully.

  He could only hope his own way succeeded long before Arawn’s. For he feared that the Champion would be left nothing but a shell of his former self if the Shadow continued to have his way. And void… did it surprise him how much he disliked that outcome. After their many discussions and debates, he was starting to grow rather fond of the Champion.

  Milton was shaken out of his thoughts when Arawn began to leave.

  “Tick tock, dreamer,” the man reminded him a final time before he left, “tick tock…”

  ***

  It didn’t take long for Galen to realize the rare opportunity he had in having free time would go to waste.

  The first two hours, he’d been fine and able to focus well enough. He’d spent that time fact checking a lot of what Milton had been teaching him the past month. Unfortunately, all this did was confirm what Galen had already suspected. Things such as obvious biases that he’d already known existed. And without other sources of history, he wouldn’t be able to fully distinguish what was merely bias, and what had been true.

  Man, he missed having the Internet. He never realized just how much he relied on it and how convenient it was until he’d been summoned to Avani. Unfortunately, the Dominion had no Internet, despite having other modern tech.

  After that, he’d taken a short break before returning to what he was doing.

  It was by the third hour that problems had arisen. His thoughts became too scattered, he found he couldn’t focus for very long, and he felt far too anxious for some reason. He’d frequently scratched at his neck and bounced one of his knees in the past hour, and grew increasingly frustrated at his lack of ability to study.

  He checked the time, and found that, normally, he’d be doing his second training session with Arawn for the day.

  Maybe that’s it… Galen wondered.

  He figured that he’d gotten so used to being beaten to a bloody pulp around this time that his body was merely expecting injuries and pain to come. And the lack of it was causing some subconscious anxiety.

  “Alright, that’s it,” he pushed himself from his desk, “when we get back from that trip into Ignis, I’m demanding they tone down the training.”

  He sighed and wondered what he would do until it was time for bed.

  The bed… Galen found his gaze wandering to his overly large mattress.

  For some reason, the bed seemed to call to him. He hadn’t felt all that sleepy before, but now he was suddenly beginning to feel drowsy. There was also a feeling that he couldn’t describe. A feeling that told him it was important he go to sleep.

  He frowned, as he mentally called to his sword, Redian. Is this you? Are you messing with me or something?

  “No? What are you talking about, boss?” the Sentient Weapon asked.

  The confusion from the sword seemed genuine enough, so Galen dismissed the possibility that Redian was pulling some kind of prank on him.

  Oh to hell with it. Never mind. It’s nothing. I’m going to bed.

  “Seems kind of early, even by your standards, but alright. Sweet dreams, boss! Get plenty of rest,” Redian advised.

  I’ll do… just that… Galen thought as he lied down on his bed.

  Immediately he fell asleep.

  And he found himself very quickly having a dream.

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  Only it was no ordinary dream.

  It was one he hadn’t had for over half a year now. The last time he’d had it, he’d been on Earth.

  For the first time since he’d been summoned to Avani, Galen Daxton had THAT dream again.

  ***

  The dream had an unfamiliar beginning in this occurrence, and this time, everything seemed to carry the kind of fuzziness typically associated with a dream. This was surprising, since every time Galen had had this dream, he’d had remarkable clarity of the details until he woke up.

  Usually, he’d be kneeling near the top of a mountain, but this time the dream started with him locked in battle against some kind of soldier in immaculate armor. His foe was mighty, and Galen was astounded at the shockwaves that resulted from the strength of his enemy, as well as how the armored soldier moved so fast he seemed to blur.

  What shocked Galen next was that he was not only keeping up with his powerful foe, but that his dream self seemed completely calm. It was as though his dream self had faced opponents of this caliber several times before. To the point that it was now unremarkable.

  The movements of his dream self and the soldier were too fast for Galen to keep up with, and before he knew it his dream self had won the battle.

  Galen mentally flinched as his other self decapitated his foe with a stoic expression before calmly sheathing his sword. His dream self looked up, and Galen saw through those eyes that there was another fierce battle taking place in the skies above.

  It ended moments after his dream self’s own fight.

  Another armored soldier fell from the sky, their armor having a large, simmering, and gaping hole where their heart should be. His dream self ignored the corpse that had fallen, and instead gazed at the figure falling, no, floating down towards him.

  It was her.

  The young woman that always accompanied him in this dream.

  Her fair skin, short, golden blonde hair with long bangs and locks in the front, and mesmerizing sapphire blue eyes were all as he remembered. She had a stoic expression, though Galen could sense the relief from her that he was okay.

  It was so strange that he could sense her emotions like this.

  His dream self thought nothing of it, however.

  He embraced the woman, who hugged him back tightly. Together, they looked up at the nearby mountain, and Galen saw for the first time through his dream self’s eyes the eerie, unnatural crimson storm that was accumulating and forming throughout the entire sky. It seemed to be amalgamating at that mountain’s peak.

  The young woman spoke in a whisper to him, “The others are fighting off his forces. I don’t know how long they’ll hold.”

  His dream self nodded as he responded, “They’ve done well so far, giving us this opportunity. Now’s our chance to finally put an end to all this.”

  His dream self extended a hand to the young woman, “Are you good to go, ----?”

  When his dream self spoke the young woman’s name, all Galen heard was static distortion. He hated that part. How he wished he could hear the young woman’s name.

  She snorted, “Of course. If that fight was enough to drain me, then I’d have no business coming to help you fight him.”

  His dream self chuckled, “Now, now. You know I meant no offense.”

  The young woman smiled, and Galen felt his heart skip a beat. For some reason, the young woman seemed extra clear in this fuzzy dream.

  “I know, Galen. I know.”

  After that, everything seemed to blur. When it refocused, it was now the same recurring dream he’d had many times before.

  He marched up towards the top a massive mountain. The enormous storm forming earlier was now in full force as it raged around him with such ferocity that it seemed unnatural. It was as if the tempest was alive and full of wrath directed right at him.

  Lightning flashed. But unlike the normal white flash it was instead an eerie, malicious red in color. This only cemented the feelings of abnormality that the alien storm gave off.

  One could view natural disasters as mother nature’s malice made manifest. Sitting in the middle of the irregular tempest, He knew that if it could truly have such human emotions, then the disasters it brought forth would be more like the storm surrounding him.

  As the scarlet tempest continued to flash with increasing frequency, and as the wrathful winds blew around them, Galen caught the young woman marching next to him. He saw her ears poking out through the bangs of her hair. They looked longer than normal and seemed… pointed?

  He dismissed the absurd thought as a trick of the flashing lights.

  The two stopped and looked to one another a final time. As he stared into the eyes of the young woman, doing his utmost to commit every little detail of her to memory, a part of him was struck with the same thought he had every time he got to this point in the dream.

  And that was that she was the most beautiful woman Galen had ever seen.

  He snapped out of that thought when his dream self spoke, “Are you alright ----?”

  As usual, Galen couldn’t hear the young woman’s name. Only a static distortion sounded in its place.

  She took a deep breath before nodding resolutely and asking him in turn, “Yes. I am. Are you ready, Galen?”

  Her voice was melodic to his ears, and was just as calm and resolved as her expression indicated. Galen felt himself, his dream self, nod in affirmation. His dream self responded, “As ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go, ---- .”

  His dream self and the young woman stood turned to face the path that led to the mountain’s peak. “It’s time to end this,” his dream self spoke with determined resolve.

  As Galen’s dream self and the young woman marched towards the mountain’s peak, heedless of the raging gale and storm that whipped at them, The last thought his dream self had as he and the young woman beside him climbed to the peak seemed to echo throughout the dream.

  ‘It’s time to slay a god.’

  ***

  Galen awoke with a start. He was panting and sweating as he lay in bed. Like every other time he’d had the dream, the memories of it began to fade with unnatural quickness from his mind. Only this time, for the first time ever, he didn’t need to exert mental energy to remember the young woman.

  Her face was clear in his mind.

  He put a hand to his sweaty forehead as his breathing calmed.

  The dream… why did I have it now of all times? It’s been six months… I’ve never gone that long without it before, so I assumed it wouldn’t come again. Only now it did… and it was different this time. It started differently than it had before. That beginning… I can’t remember it now but… that was new.

  He felt an odd sense of foreboding, and for good reason.

  The last time he’d had the dream, a disaster had struck his home days later. And in that same day, he’d been forcibly summoned from his world after watching Serenity plummet to her death.

  He sat up abruptly, and went to take a shower first thing.

  The hot water didn’t help to ease his mind. Once he came out, he came to a decision.

  Milton had warned him that he’d had a bad feeling that something was going to happen. Now that Galen had had the dream, he too now shared that ominous feeling. After getting dressed, he crawled under his bed to where he’d hidden it.

  Thankfully, the box was still there, hidden just where he’d left it. He came out from under the mattress with it in tow, sat on the bed, and opened it.

  It was the handgun he’d had on his person when he’d been forcibly summoned to Avani, holster and all.

  He’d had it with him the entire time, and he’d been careful not to show it to anyone else, not even Aleksi. The first thing he did when given this room was hide the firearm to make sure it wasn’t taken from him.

  Though the Dominion had some modern technology, one thing Galen noted was an absence of firearms. It was something that confused him, but if, for some strange reason, firearms hadn’t been invented in this world, Galen didn’t want to give such an advantage over to the Dominion. So, he’d hidden it in case he ever needed it.

  He quickly removed the magazine and checked it. It was still full, giving him a full magazine of bullets. Unfortunately, it was all he had, so if he ever had to use them, he had to make them count.

  His dad had taught him how to properly conceal and carry, so Galen followed those instructions to make sure the deadly firearm wouldn’t be visible underneath his clothes. He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t need to use the handgun, and that his foreboding feelings were just the anxiety he’d been dealing with the past few weeks.

  He doubted he’d be that lucky.

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