The Dream

[Revenant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImccK1qZ7xM

The dream is always the same...

You hear the song in the darkness of your dreams before consciousness comes and your eyes open to what lies before. In the distance, you see a wide red river of what your mind tells you can only be blood. It runs past a large dark tower and the sound of the river as it ebbs and flows echoes with the sound of cries and moans of pain and sorrow. The tower is black stone, pitted but otherwise featureless save for one opening high in it's ascent. It blots out the moon with its dark form like a great lance thrust into the night sky's wound. And in the tower's opening you see what appears to be a figure...long white hair, fine like spider webs, covers the face you know must be behind it. And one pale hand reaches out from the tower...beckoning to you. From somewhere high in the dark sky you hear a crow caw.

But the song pulls you from that sight, that and the light that suddenly flowers in the darkness not far from where you stand and it is then that you notice many shadowed shapes that move upon the fringe of that light. A light that now draws your eyes to its source.

A large stake is in the center of burgeoning flames and the ground around it is covered in dark ashes. Chained to the stake is a man who's form is charred and blackened, though when you look upon him the eyes open and are bright blue. His charred lips part to speak and you see the flames within as he says, "He knows you are coming." Then he falls silent and his head drops.

It is then you notice the source of the song you hear, a music box with a globe atop it filled with swirling snow and some small obscured form, next to a small figure. Sitting on the edge of the ashes is a little girl of no more than six years old. Her hair is dark and her face is pale as she solemnly looks at you, a trace of sadness in her eyes. The music stops and it is then that she speaks the words slow and deliberate, "I fly unbidden, whilst darkness weaves." You try to respond to her but find yourself uable to speak.

She pauses a moment, looking at you and then at the dark shapes around you both, before she contines speaking now as if reciting a rhyme:

"13 souls, both dark and bright,
Entered the tomb to end His blight.
The 13 fell despite their might,
But rose again by the Father's sight.
Death then Life, caused quite a fright.
In some their will and minds took flight.
The One, she fell and lost her light.
And from that fall came the Father's delight.
The price was paid and was not slight.
For 9 fine souls still feed the Night.
But Death reborn leads to their plight,
The Quint bound to the Lady of Wight.
A mourning Dawn in the pale moonlight,
To the dark tower rode to finish the fight,
To free the souls and make things right."

The little girl then begins to write in the darkened ashes at the foot of the burned man, the letters burning bright as her finger draws them, Ashes of Sorrow.

She then rises and walks toward you whispering one word, "Lupre" before walking through you, a cold chill gripping your very being as you then awaken from the dream.