The Dreamer

Although the faith of the old gods was left behind long ago when the Dark first arose, many years past, there are those who still cling to belief as a weapon against the unliving horrors of the Shade.

It may seem a fool's errand to think that belief could possibly save anyone from the claws of the living dead, but in almost thirty years of service to the Order I've seen things I can't begin to explain.

The first time I faced a reanimated corpse, lunging at me with hands still befouled by the gore from its last victim, I cursed the gods for allowing such an abomination to exist.

The second time I faced the Dark, and beheld a horror more shadow than flesh rend men limb from limb with a gesture, I was sure the gods were dead.

When I returned home to Nolyagrad and beheld how utterly the Dark had laid waste to the city - shattering even the bedrock upon which the city had been built and grinding it into dust - I knew that the gods could never have even existed.

What kind of deity would allow such wanton and cruel destruction to befall its own creation? I saw people praying in the streets in Yursgrad, in Dazhgorod, in Cimbris, in a dozen other small towns and cities, and each time I laughed hollowly. Belief, I thought, was the refuge of the weak. The gods, if they existed at all, weren't listening.

Seven Mountain Wounded Elk, one of the sorcerer-shamans from across the sea, tried to change my mind. He said that the world in which we live is bound together by a singular Dream, by the imagination of a sleeping god, far greater and older than anything in existence, and that we are ourselves manifestations of that dream. Like with any living creature, dreams can be for good or ill. We are manifestations of the Dream; so too, therefore, must be the Dark which now besets our lands. If we are the Dreamer's creations, the Dark is its nightmares made manifest.

He didn't say what would happen when the sleeping god wakes up.

I don't often speak to Seven Mountain. I never sleep well afterwards.

Anyway, when the Order was shattered at Oakheart, I gave up hope entirely. I fled - aimless, terrified - into the forest, like so many others. That is why I wasn't there to see the thing that lives in Oakheart woken up, and why I wasn't there for the first battle the Dark truly lost.

But I was there when the Order's recombined armies relieved Ostvangr, after a siege lasting nine weeks, and I saw Seven Mountain's kinsmen do something I will never be able to explain, not as long as I live. I saw something I cannot name come to us from a place I cannot begin to describe, and although it existed for but a second, in that second it not only defeated the Dark but destroyed its servants utterly.

That is when I began to believe that there might be hope. That despite all the horror and misery visited upon us by the Dark, there might be - somewhere - some higher power watching over us, granting us the chance to survive.

I know that the chances of my surviving this war are poor. I have no home to return to; Nolyagrad has been ashes and dust for over twenty years. The child I had, and the woman who bore her, are only memories now. At dawn tomorrow, the Order marches on Rîmagrad. Not a single living soul has beheld the ancient corpse-city in nearly a hundred years, much less entered it. None of the scouts we have sent have returned. The Dark infests the city so thoroughly that it will be impossible to tell where one undead horror ends and the next begins. That I will die in the coming battle is almost a certainty.

But for the first time in almost thirty years, I believe that we will win this war. I believe that despite all this horror, and suffering, and loss, and grief, and even despite my own death, that one day the Dark will pass - and that when it does, somewhere, somehow, there will be some of us left.

I may be a fool. It may be foolish to believe. But I have seen the power of belief - just once - and it was enough for me.

Even nightmares have to end.

-From the journal of an unknown warrior of the Order