Matthew wiped beads of sweat from his brow as the man behind the desk flipped through pages and pages of thick parchment, bound haphazardly by twine. The man had a practiced stoicism. His eyes barely moved as they scanned the text. He had been in this position before. Matthew looked away for a moment, glancing at the pile of nicknacks arranged around the surface of the man’s desk. Again.

  A familiar glass statuette.

  The same key to some city he still had not heard of.

  That ugly, fancy rock.

  Garbage. All of it. Matt had become intimately familiar with it all, though, as this dream repeated itself night after night.

  The man finally looked up from the document, as he had a hundred times already. “Mr. Carpenter, your ledger is,” the man paused while he used his thumb to flip the corner of the page, “extensive. And most of this property has been destroyed, ruined, or otherwise rendered completely useless beyond the capacity outlined when these funds were loaned to you.” Matthew could almost recite the lines with him.

  “Well,” Matt muttered, his nerves causing his voice to quiver. “It was never my fault. You see-” Funny how, despite knowing the situation, he could never find his own damned confidence. Dreams are funny like that.

  “It says on the first page here to be wary of your excuses.”

  “Honestly, sir,” Matthew urged. “The farm near Hoodsholm was sacked by bandits. We had nowhere to go. We found a place to stay at The Throne-” The interruption used to bother him. Now it just meant he was one step closer to taking his frustration out.

  “So you took a new mortgage despite sitting on a bandit-ravaged farm plot?” the banker asked.

  Matthew looked down sheepishly. Same shoes he wore every time he entered this dreamy office. A pair he had never owned in his life.

  “Then the apartment in The Throne suffered water damage. So you took out another loan for repairs,” the banker glanced through the paperwork again to make sure his remarks were accurate. “But then you moved to Crossroads? I wonder, how was it you got there?”

  Matt ignored that the cities were different again. They changed every so often in this recurring dream. But the major details never did. “I had a friend in a caravan. But highwaymen hit us halfway there,” Matthew explained, again. This time, boredom creeped into his voice. “The money that was meant to help us settle down went to making sure we would all be able to survive the trip.”

  The banker chuckled, “but what about the apartment's water damage?”

  “The church taxed us heavily for the damage done to the streets. Even though it was their sewage system that flooded our place.”

  “Mr. Carpenter,” the man said dismissively, “it has been several years since your first outstanding payment notice. I honestly don’t understand how you managed to swindle more money out of the banks after that. You are completely irresponsible and totally untrustworthy. Frankly, I feel bad for dear Mrs. Carpenter.”

  Finally, the part where Matthew was allowed to lose his temper. “She trusts me!” he said, following the dream’s script. He even pounded the desk this time. A flare he had added months back. One that he felt was tasteful. Potent.

  “I’m sure you have some sort of redeeming quality somewhere in there,” the banker said, grinning a grin that would soon be full of molten stone. “But it is surely not your financial acumen. This history you have of poor decisions and your penchant for putting yourself in such great volumes of debt to governments, friends, and institutions is counter-intuitive to any sort of family you would want to produce.” The banker sat back and folded his hands. “Your father would be disappointed.”

  Matthew’s chair crashed to the floor as he leapt to his feet. No matter how many times he saw this part play out, he would never control his temper. His father, even these dreams, was off limits. “Do not ever talk about my father!” he roared as he had so many times before.

  The banker laughed as he looked down at the ledger, pleased with the damage he had done. “Well, it’s quite obvious really that I won’t be seeing my geld today, correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Matthew refused to let go of his rage. The conversation about the payments, he had learned early, was not necessary to this repetitive narrative. Matthew left the office quickly, angrily, but excited to see his wife on the bench outside. She would give him the weapon he would use to murder the banker, and would cheer him on as he did. It was the best part.

  But outside the office, things were different. It was a little darker. A little colder. And Kaitlyn was nowhere to be found. “Kaitlyn?” Matthew called as looked up and down the hall. “Kait?”

  After looking around, he turned back to the bench and could not stifle his shock when he saw a shape. It was a shadowy, inky patch in the vague shape of a man’s torso. But it gave way to tendrils of smoky mist where the legs should be.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Portions of the shape’s head, though, had profound detail. A black, iron crown glinted in the dreamworld’s light. Though he had no other discernible feature, the shape had two glittering red eyes. Brilliant gems shining against the harsh darkness of the rest of the personage.

  “She is not here tonight, Matthew,” it said in an ill fitting baritone. His consonants were enunciated to perfection. Not a wisp of an accent in any syllable. “Bridges burnt.” It turned its head to look at Matt, the red jewels twinkling.

  “What are you?”

  “A man with aspirations,” the shape sighed as it stood. Or rather, floated to a standing position. The smoky shadows near the floor continued to churn and billow with little else to change. “But do we not all have those? I know you do. Night after night I let you murder that poor man you have never met.”

  “You made this dream?”

  The shape chuckled. “Do you think yourself imaginative enough?”

  Matthew opened his mouth, ready to snap at the remark but the shape simply laughed again.

  “Do not raise your voice to me. I have watched you for months. I could fell you before you knew I had raised a hand.”

  “Are you threatening me? In my dream?” Matthew challenged.

  Suddenly, the entity was about him, the shadows spilling around, blackening everything. Just the crown and the red eyes stood out amongst the smokiness. “Your dream, Matthew? Your dream is to be feared. Not loved. Not respected. Feared. And what have you to show for it? Not a wife, for sure. This is not your dream. This is a playground provided to you by powers you can not comprehend. So find your place before me, lest I make a place for you beneath a gravestone.”

  Matthew was dumbfounded. The creature’s tone was like a parent to a child. He had never been scolded like that before, even when his mother was still alive.

  “Now that you have settled down,” the shape began as the shadows retreated. “We can begin to triage your little mistakes.”

  “What mistakes?”

  “Please,” the shape said, raising a hand to dismiss Matthew’s foolishness. “I give you the same dream every night, and you can not see what you have done to ruin my advice to you?”

  Matthew looked around, thinking. Nothing came to mind.

  “Your wife, Matthew.”

  “Yes, she’s not here,” he said matter of factly, before growing angry. “What did you do with her?”

  The shape laughed again. His sense of humor was beginning to irritate Matt. “Me? What did I do with her? Only try to show you that she is your most powerful ally. And yet you waste all this time, seeking out old friends. Playing Divine Intervention in bars on the side of the road. Slapping your wife in front of very powerful druids. You have destroyed the one relationship that was going to pay off for you in the end.”

  “But she-” Matthew began. The dreamweaver was having none of it.

  “But she nothing!” he shouted. “It was you, you buffoon. This woman. This brilliant woman, maintaining the spark of greatness, chose to marry you. An unascended goddess! And she wants to have your child. And you hit her?”

  Matthew looked down in shame before his temper flared again. “I don’t need to hear this. Wake me up now.”

  “No sir,” the shape said, closing in again. “We need to get to the bottom of how we are going to make this work.”

  “Make what work?” Matthew was livid, but curious.

  “The Halcyon Band. You need that if you want to amount to anything in the world. After all, ‘best husband’ is already a wash for you.”

  Matthew seethed in silence.

  “I am jesting, Matthew. Truly. You misread the signs. An honest, mortal mistake. But not one that we can not recover from. After all, your wife still offers her assistance in securing the Halcyon Band!

  “After that, we may not need her. I have someone that will help with The Throne portion of this endeavor.”

  “What do you mean? I’m going to sell the Halcyon Band?”

  “No, you’re not. We both know that. You lie to enough people, Matthew. You should not lie to yourself. Now, how will you secure the Band at the chapel? I understand you have been studying the late Jack’s documents?”

  Matthew was confused for a moment, but decided it would be best to indulge this creature. “Well, yes. I have been. The lock. That will be easy. We will use the seed Gideon gave us. If there is a Paladin or an Interrogator on site, Kaitlyn will handle that.”

  “Ah, send the pregnant woman to battle a soldier. How very chivalrous of you. No matter, once the lock is undone it will be easy to secure the device. After that, there is an inn on the road between Happfield and The Throne. That is where your new heavy will be waiting.”

  “I’m going to sell the Halcyon Band and stay with my wife,” Matthew asserted.

  The shade was quiet for a long moment. “Right then. Whatever you say. You stand on the brink of greatness. You have evidence abundant that proves you are not mature enough for an adult relationship. Yet here you are before me claiming to be above your own petty vices. You adore power and strength, Matthew. Why do you think Dream Kaitlyn gives the weapons to you? Instead of using them herself as the waking Kaitlyn surely would.

  “But yes. If you feel you will be able to resist the temptation of the Halcyon Band’s power, then verily. March on, Mister Carpenter. I am eager to see you raise your child with pride.”

  The shade began to turn more and more transparent with every word until only the two red eyes remained. The hall of the bank returned to the way it had been all those dreams past, but still without his wife.

  The banker still sat in his office, gleefully chortling about the ways he had destroyed countless lives.

  “Good luck, Matty!” the creature called.

  “Matthew, wake up,” Kaitlyn’s call was harsh. Short. The same as it had been for the past days since Gideon’s Grove. She was truly sticking with her outrage.

  Matt felt a pang of emotion when he saw the bump on her belly. He was not sure what the emotion was, but it nearly brought tears to his eyes.

  “I said, wake up,” she repeated. “Benji says he can see the chapel up over the hill. Get up and let’s get this over with.”

  “Kaitlyn, I want to talk to you,” he said softly.

  “About what?”

  “What we’ll do when this is over.”

  “What will we do? I’m going to find my parents. You’re going to go the opposite direction.”

  “Kaitlyn, don’t talk like-” but she refused to listen any more. The woman left Matt in his tent. He sighed.