Page 10 of House of Gilded Nightmares

Yet, as a deadly brawl begins at my feet, I realize the warrior put me up here to keep me out of harm’s way. What kind of kidnapper does that?

My thoughts are interrupted by the clang of metal on…I don’t even know what to call the things that attack him now. They are made of shadow and mist, like the curls of fog that hug the forest floor. They seem completely insubstantial, yet the warrior’s blade meets something solid. Every time his sword strikes, the dark metal flashes as if imbued with some sort of magic.

The creatures press in around him with eyes glowing yellow or green or orange. Occasionally there’s a flash of teeth or claws. They tower over the warrior, twice as tall as him, nearly the height of my hiding spot in the branches of the trees. But he holds his own, whirling back and forth with his blade, not only keeping them at bay but getting in strikes here and there.

That’s when another of the shadow beasts joins the fight. It doesn’t go for the warrior, however. It comes straight for me. From across the small clearing where they fight, its eyes instantly rest on mine, glowing amber like tiny moons. It’s as if it can…sense me. My heart hammers in my chest as it reaches the base of the tree I’m in. One clawed hand scrapes down the bark a couple feet below where I rest in the branches.

I break off one of the nearby branches. It’s narrow but sharp at the end where I snapped it off; a pathetic weapon, but I’m not going to just sit here and do nothing. When the monster lunges for me again, I stab downward with the pointed end, jabbing the thing right in the eye. It roars in pain and anger and swipes one lethal paw at the tree, knocking a huge chunk of wood from the trunk. Then it sinks its claws into it and begins to climb toward me.

I try to pull myself higher into the tree, but there aren’t any other branches close enough to hoist myself up. And unlike in my dream realm, I have no dagger to defend myself. A scream escapes my lips as the monster grabs ahold of my ankle and drags me downward. Its body may be made of shadow, but its claws are very real. Pain shoots through my leg.

A moment later, there’s a sickening crunch as the warrior embeds his sword into the back of the thing. It lets out a shriek and vanishes in a cloud of gray smoke. He doesn’t even look up at me as he turns again to face the other creatures. Where he’d been a deadly force before, now it seems some god-like power envelopes him. Dark shadows begin to shift and swirl off his body, and I feel a storm-like tension fill the air. It’s magic emanating from the warrior himself. He attacks the monsters with double the power he had before, triple even, vanquishing them all with a few short parries of his blade.

It’s only when he’s standing alone amidst the trees, the black ash of his fallen enemies swirling around him, chest rising and falling from effort, that he finally turns to look at me. Those silver eyes collide with mine, eyes I’d seen in my dreams every night for years. Some unreadable emotion swims through them, a storm breaking across me, and then his face goes blank and he strides forward. When he reaches the base of the tree, he gestures for me to come down.

“I told you to keep quiet,” he says sternly as I slide down the trunk.

I try very hard to avoid his outstretched arms, but I end up crashing into him anyways. The warrior catches me before I hit the ground. For a moment we’re pressed against each other, chest to chest, before he picks me up, massive hands wrapped around each shoulder, and sets me down again a few feet away from him.

My blood is pumping too hard. I take deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself. “So, this is my fault, then?” I snap, pointing to my bloody ankle where the monster scraped me with its claws.

“I gave you an order,” the warrior says, his gaze icy on mine. “You did not obey.”

“You abducted me!” I snap. “Of course I’m not going to listen to you!”

“I did not abduct you,” he snarls. He grabs my arm and shoves me forward. “We need to get to the other side of this forest.”

I twist out of his grasp. “You owe me a lot of answers, and I’m not taking another step until you explain what’s happening.”

The warrior eyes me for a moment like he’s going to sling me over his shoulder again, stalking in a slow circle around me. But then he stops and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but we need to keep walking.”

“Fine.” I move in the direction he’d tried to point me. “You can start by where we are.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, so I glance over my shoulder at him. Despite how dim it is in the forest, his eyes spark against the gloom. He moves lithely for someone so tall and broad-shouldered. His hand still grips his dark blade tightly in one hand.

“You are in your rightful home,” he says at last. “The place where you were born.”

His words surprise me so much that I stop walking abruptly, causing him to nearly run into me. He halts, so close that his head is above my right shoulder, and I feel the warmth radiating off him. Slowly, he draws in a deep breath as if he’s inhaling my scent.

“We shouldn’t stop,” he says gruffly, though his voice has dropped several octaves, low and soft in my ear.

Heart pounding, I take one step forward, then another. “I don’t know where I was born,” I say, my voice catching.

“This,” he says, waving his hands at our surroundings, a movement I see out of the corner of my eye, “is the Nightmare Realm. Valaron.”

“The what?” My steps falter again, and the warrior nudges me forward from behind.

“The Nightmare Realm. A place parallel to Eldare. Parallel to all of Aureon.” His voice is tight, almost pained.

“A parallel realm? What do you even mean? I’ve never heard of such a realm next to Eldare.”

“It’s not exactly…next to it,” the warrior says slowly, as if searching for the right words. “As much as it is…on top of it. Underneath it. Running through it. It doesn’t exist on the same plane of existence as the place we just came from.”

“I don’t understand,” I say breathily, heart racing. How can another world exist on top of my own? How did we get here? And how can it be true that I came from this place, only to be abandoned in Eldare?

“You were taken from your home as an infant.” He’s walking next to me now, and his eyes flick down to mine. “We’ve been looking for you ever since.”

I duck beneath a low-hanging black branch that looks like the claw that just a few minutes ago dug into my ankle. The wound is shallow, at least, nothing that some healing salve can’t fix. “Who’s we?”

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