THE LANDS FORSAKEN | SOLVANEL’S DREAM

  When the old man’s breath was no more, Solvanel woke up inside a dream.

  He was lying on top of a hill, hands behind his head as he gazed into a familiar expanse.

  The sun was off somewhere in the east, its orange radiance melting into the gentle blue, staining the undersides of the clouds drifting aimlessly overhead.

  Anything is possible inside a dream.

  The pastures of his imagination were a haven in trying times.

  The last time he dreamed up this scenery was the night before he left the village, over six months and many lifetimes ago.

  Back then, there was a constant breeze going across the field.

  But now…

  Today, there was one more sheep added to his pastures.

  That made two victims who fell to the temptations of his cursed gaze.

  Like any poor shepherd, he drifted asleep beneath the sun, watching his flock frolic in peace. But his rest ended abruptly when the very fabric of the dream shifted beneath him—wrenched from his grasp. Wrestled would be too generous a word. The being didn’t fight for control. It claimed it, as though it had owned the place all along.

  Solvanel’s pastures of paradise morphed and contorted at the being’s whim, until it was standing over him in the depths of an endless garden. Not unlike the one he hallucinated at the other side of that cliff.

  He was hesitant, at first, to engage with the formless being. But he had little choice in the matter. Months of sleeplessness had left him trapped in this fragile peace, and he knew he would not be waking anytime soon.

  With the power of dreaming taken away from him, it erased and remade the space as it saw fit, yet there they were right behind the usurper. His two sheep, grazing in the bushes. The being had spared them, or more accurately, incorporated their existence into its imagination.

  “Who are you?” asked Solvanel.

  Solvanel jumped up and scoured the garden.

  He used both his mundane and his cursed sight. However, like nothing had ever been done before, it had hidden itself from both sides of his vision, leaving him standing in the garden by himself.

  His sheep stopped mid-feast. As if overcome by fatigue, they curled up in the shade and fell asleep.

  Then, the being spoke from everywhere, yet it was nowhere anymore. And it said,

  [I am not.]