Engineer's Empire 2.0

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

That night, something cold and dreadful wove through his dreams. He could feel an inky darkness creeping all around him. A dry, creaking laugh echoed from somewhere far off. Slade looked around to see that he was deep within the Wastes. Glowing amethyst eyes stared from the depths of nowhere. Slade tried to focus his vision, but could never make out exactly where the glow of the eyes was coming from, as though it would shift or move every time he looked directly at that. Rusted machines clicked and scraped as they crept through the shadows nearby. Whispering and slithering could be heard shuffling around within the twisted ruins. Slade found himself standing alone in the crumbling forest of rusted metal. A sliver of moon peaked out from behind jagged clouds slithering across the sky. A long cloud gathered around the moon until the sliver of moon looked like a gleaming eye in the center of a long, alien head.

The darkness edged closer toward him, like the way spilled ink will creep across a page. Long fingers of pure shadow reached out toward him, and he backed away. Farther away, glowing pale green lights floated along in the shifting darkness. The machines scuttled about all around him, just out of eyesight. The click, click, click of many thin pieces of metal plinked across the ground like hundreds of very large insect legs. There was something odd about the machines, something unsettling and unclean. He turned, trying to see the creatures he knew were moving in all around him, but could make out nothing clearly. Some shadow or stone kept them just out of site. But he could feel them edging closer as they circled him.

He heard a scream somewhere in the distance. He looked to see where it was coming from. He ran to help but the darkness only intensified. He gripped the orange stone that hung from his neck for comfort and felt warmth there. When he looked down, he saw that it had begun to glow. Fire leapt from the stone and wrapped around him. There was a loud hissing sound as everything turned bright orange and the darkness faded away.

Slade sprang up from bed in the still of the night. After images and echoes of that awful place flickered all around him. He looked down to see the dream memory of ghostly orange flames still traveling along his body. He screamed and jumped out of bed, patting at his arms. He blinked and the after images from his dream were gone. On the floor, in the darkness, he could still feel the inhuman cold of that other place. Jeffrey and Tyler appeared next to him.

"You okay?" Jeffrey asked.

Panting and covered in sweat, Slade looked up at Jeffrey only to find the eerie amethyst eyes hovering behind him in the corner of the room. He leapt back again, hitting his head on the wall. Cradling his head, he crumpled back onto the floor.

"Ow..."

"Ya, he's fine," Tyler smirked.

Jeffrey looked over his shoulder toward whatever Slade had been so afraid of, but saw nothing there. Jeffrey knelt, waving his hand in front of Slade's eyes. Slade blinked several times as the remains of that dreadful place faded away and the orphanage merged into view, becoming more real. He placed his hands on the packed dirt floor, comforted for the first time at waking up in the orphanage bunkhouse.

"What happened?" Jeffrey asked. Slade looked up at Jeffrey, the creepy eyes in the corner now gone.

"I had a nightmare. I think," Slade replied. He swore he could still hear those creatures moving.

"You think?" Tyler asked, crossing his arms.

"Yeah. I mean, it all seemed so real. It felt like something was trying to keep me in that nightmare, like I was fighting to get out," Slade answered.

"You're lucky Lumen didn't hear you, or you'll wish you had stayed in there. He'd come in here and brain all of us for sure for waking him up," Tyler chided, rubbing his head from the last beating. Slade shrugged.