(MxM) Tales of a Shifter (P3)- The Secret Threat

Chapter 8 - Evolving Dreams

Chapter 8

It was disorienting to wake up...and be floating in mid-air....over a giant bottomless rocky chasm.

The sun, a beautiful russet of rose and orange glowed from behind the peaks of the mountains and the valleys and the clouds of billowing smoke.

Wait....I'm dreaming....

And just like that Brandon heard the men shouting at each other below him.

One of the men was Brandon. But the Brandon of his dreams....was garbed in a bright white and long silken robe that seemed to exude power...and prestige and beauty. This Brandon had hair that was short and cropped, he spoke with a strange dialect....and was dripping in blood and wielded a long blade in his hand that was smeared in fresh gore.

Across from the Brandon of his dreams...there stood one of the most beautiful men that Brandon had ever seen.

This man was Kail. He screamed at Brandon. His face stretched into various expressions. From agony, to rage....to hatred. Kail was and had been a part of Brandon's life from the moment the dreams had begun to form in his mind. From the moment they had begun to torture him.

The dreams were always the same. They made no sense....but they were a part of him anyway. Brandon wanted to dash the beautiful man and the strange Brandon from his mind.

Brandon already had so much to deal with in the waking world. He found the dreams.....nearly unbearable as the stress of his circumstances began to weigh him down.

Brandon turned his eyes away from the men beneath him as they screamed at each other...and he looked at the dazzling sun cracking the heavens with one ray of light after another.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up

Brandon told himself....but he knew he wouldn't awaken until the horrible events beneath him came to a conclusion.

But something happened this time. Something about this dream....was oddly different. Somehow.....Brandon had begun to dream....at a point much earlier in the conversation between the phantoms of his dreams.

It was the direction of the conversation that caught his ear and made him perk up and listen.

"The blood of thousands will run if do not oppose them Kail....Listen to me!" Brandon's twin shouted. He sounded desperate....but powerful. As if the phantom version of Brandon was used to giving orders.

IT was a shock to witness these few words after hearing nothing but the same words being repeated endlessly for decades in his sleep.

Why did the dream change?

Brandon thought to himself, but was unable to contemplate the answer as the dream continued.

"You were the one that wanted this to happen. You told us to become their allies....Am I supposed to throw away the lives of our people.....meaninglessly?" Kail shouted back. His beautiful face set in a stern

"So this is what we are reduced to? This is what becomes of us! And you will let them topple everything that we have worked so hard to achieve? Can you see that they won't just stop here!?" Brandon's twin screamed turning to the man behind him. "Kail, you have to understand that they are using you!"

Just as it was in every dream Kail's hair that was black ran down his back in a curtain and bound there in a thick braid. His face was covered in marks and symbols completed in black and white paints. He looked as though he had just emerged from battle much like Brandon, he had cuts and blood stained him and his clothing. Clothing that like Brandon's twin was a long gossamer gown, but unlike Brandon's this man's gown was coal black and covered in etched golden spirals in the shapes of dragons.

And then there was the long thin blade that Kail held loosely by his side. It was covered in fresh gore well as if a terrible battle was wagging just beyond the mountain tops.

"In this I am noting but a tool." Kail finally said back to Brandon's twin. His handsome face melting into a grave scowl of regret. "You're the one who drove us to this Brother."

Brandon's twin turned to the man named Kail as he raised his weapon before him in a daunting stance.

Brandon's twin closed his mint green eyes, eyes so similar to Brandon's, and looked down. Tears started falling across his soot and blood smeared cheeks as he bowed his head. "No, they brought US to this." he said to Kail. "And you betrayed everything you knew for a lie. You will never ever be able to take this back."

The rest of their words were routine....words that Brando had heard them speak a thousand times.

Did I just imagine that this dream was different?

Brandon asked himself feeling dejected.

With a heavy heart Brandon began to feel the levity over him fading away. The dream ending. He prepared himself for the darkness that was coming his way.

"No." Kail smiled over at Brandon's twin sadly. Kail raised the blade before him strawberry light glancing off the silvery blade in his hands. "I betrayed everything I know for a future. We all knew that there was no going back, not for me. Or for you. I'm embracing the evils I have committed today, so that we can have a future. I've made the choice to do this horrible terrible thing to my brother....All that remains is for us to settle the score." Kail finished. And suddenly the light reflecting off his blade was blinding Brandon.

And it was at this point that Brandon was supposed to black out and the pain was supposed to start ripping him apart, but the dream....didn't end this time. The pain didn't come.

The dream persisted....it grew. It morphed and it became something even more terrifying....