Archer's Character Quiz
Your character is plagued by a recurring nightmare/dream. Describe the dream.
[Setting: One month before the Black Wyvern's first mission in a small Shadow called Devorna against the two military powers there, the Overlord Fashak and Warlord Mageb...]Archer bolted straight upright as the dagger that rested beneath his pillow slipped into his hand. "Come, you demon! Let's be done with it!" he called into the summer night's darkness that filled his chamber. A reply did not come from the room, nor from without in the hall. His eyes scanned the window to the barracks courtyard below, looking for the movement that never came.
"Damn," he cursed himself quietly. "Why does he still haunt me?" he thought.
A moment later there was a pounding at the door. "Lieutenant Archer!" Sergeant Mykal called.
"Come, Sergeant." Archer said. "I'm fine Mykal," he offered as the young non-commissioned officer entered the room, his drawn blade a sharp contrast to his nightshirt. "Just a dream."
"Sir, can I do something for you?" the dark haired man asked.
"Yes, pour me a drink Mykal, and when we're in my chamber drinking after hours, it is just Archer, alright?"
"Yes, sir, I mean... A drink, sure," Mykal stammered.
Archer knew in his heart that he had chosen his men well when King Eric commissioned him to build this unit. A bit young perhaps, but Archer never had met a man truer of heart and a more loyal subject of the Crown. He accepted the glass of Vastmark bourbon with a smile and sipped it, savoring the cool fire warming his chest.
"Sir," a smile and a laugh, "Archer. Would you care to talk about it?" Mykal asked after he sat on the chair aside of Archer's small desk.
"I'm not sure I can explain it Mykal, but perhaps." Another draw at the bourbon and Archer started in on the tale.
"I'm running in what appears to be a hedge maze, such as those behind the Castle. There's a man chasing me. Someone I'm afraid of, someone I'm not willing to turn and fight with." Archer looks pale at even the thought of this person. Another sip of the bourbon. "I know I've walked those paths before in daylight, but now in the darkness my senses fail me. One moment there's a straight path, the next I'm stumbling through brambles like the garden hasn't been tended in decades. The statues have been defiled and some are crumbling, almost unrecognizable."
"Suddenly, when I fear I'll never lose him, I fall through one of the walls into a serene pastoral setting, gone is the maze, but the statues remain. It's the Royals; King Oberon, Prince Eric, Princess Flora, all those living and others I can't recognize." Another sip of the bourbon. "They seem so life-like that no sculptor's hands might've carved them, but as if a precise moment in time were cut from the fabric of space and the mold filled with some liquid rock or such. They seem to stretch to forever across this green plain."
"I find myself sitting on a bench before the second Princess Deirdre monument I'd found, this one sleeping on a bed, her hair in a braid. Something about her reminded me about my mother and it seemed a safe place when the man was behind me again, his shadow casting blackness over myself and the statue, the only light that of his eyes, two silver specks in a starless night." Another sip of the bourbon.
"Now I draw my sword, a great silver thing chased with some mazelike pattern on it and slice at the darkness, but although it fills everything, I can't hit it. The sword strike blue-silver sparks as it arcs through the sky. 'A hit!' I revel in my success, only to see that I've struck the beautiful likeness that held me in rapt attention." Another sip of the bourbon, this one the last.
"That's pretty much it," he says to Mykal. "Thanks for the ear." There's a edge of an order to his voice and the young sergeant leaves quietly, leaving Archer with his unspoken visions of a broken soldier crying over a woman he never knew for the pains he inflicted in his fight with a man he never knew.
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