Hyperion Dreams

6 - My Roman Battle

At any moment, I can be sitting in front of my workstation, and then the room will go blue. 

A sky will form around me, the wind will tousle my hair, and shwup-de-wup!—I'm standing in a beautiful Roman landscape, and smelling the wonderful crisp mountain air.  I look around, and feel the gravel under my feet.

It is my habit now to always check my feet, and what I'm standing on, whenever I enter a new dream. I notice that I'm wearing heavy Roman leather armor. Although heavy, it's quite comfortable. There is a handsome dapple grey stallion standing near me. It is an officer's horse, and I know it's mine.

I mount my horse and head for the forest. There's a ravine and a small rise on the left. I hear the clashing of metal and swords, and people screaming as I ride my horse into the ravine. I see one of my warriors, his face is strangely familiar, but I just can't place it. Is he the warrior called 'Ratslayer?'

He's fighting with three barbarians.

I dig the spurs into my steed and charge. At the same time I switch my sword to my left hand, and raise it above my head in a great arc. I feel the centrifugal force push my blood into my hands, and the power into my blade. I cleave the head straight off of the barbarian attacking on the left side.

Turning my horse around, one of the barbarians has seen me. I get off my horse, since it's a fair fight now, I don't want to give this barbarian scum any chance to injure my horse in any way. Aah!—see there: he's right handed—I'm left handed—perfect!

Grasping the moment; I rush him, and shove the edge of my shield into his face—at the same instant with my left arm, I make a sweeping uppercut with my sword, from under my shield and into his groin. I cannot see him, but I can hear his deep painful howling as he falls on the ground in pain, screaming and writhing in uncontrollable spasms. He never stops screaming.

Once again, I feel the centrifugal force in my hands push the power into my blade, as it describes a great arc. I lunge and bend on one knee. The blade comes down on his head. His skull makes a kind of 'tok' sound as it hits the stones on the ground. The blood spatters up in the air and into my face. One drop of blood trickles down over my upper lip—I taste it, but unfortunately, I have no time to relish it.

I mount my horse; the sounds of the warrior Ratslayer dispatching his singular barbarian aggressor echo through the ravine. Now this barbarian was a smart one; he thought he was going to be sly and cut Ratslayer's Achilles tendon from below. Instead, Ratslayer anticipated the move, and crushed him by kneeling on top of him, right as he went for the low blow.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. In the forest by the brook, behind the rise, there's a dark patch. I sense something there, I feel it; it's from the other dream, the dream in my ancestral burial ground. The darkness in the forest is the same; darker than dark—blacker than black—more empty than anything on earth could be.

Could it be the same hole as in my ancestral dream?

There was a sudden wind. It blew dust in my eyes, but I squinted and could see the blackness rising from the forest like a fountain, and darkening the sky...

***

I awoke at my workstation with the smell of the Roman Mountains, and my faithful steed still in my nose. My hand's muscle memory felt a sword in it. I let it drop. There was nothing to drop of course. But I felt it drop, dammit!

I looked to my left; of course Boolean was not there, he got fired weeks ago.

Did he ever exist at all?

The hot fist of confusion pushed up through my stomach again. I breathed deep and tensed my muscles against it. I pressed my lips together as tightly as I could. If I could only 'think' the hotness down—reduce its temperature and keep it in my stomach, it would subside.