David Gaider - The Calling

“Is that all it took?” he croaked quietly.

“Shhhhh,” she purred, leaning in close and planting a soft kiss on his lips. He felt numb and didn’t respond. “Don’t let it bother you so. Your queen is here, my love. Will you not let me help you forget that terrible dream?”

Maric allowed himself to be pulled down on top of her. She kissed him again, and this time he responded, slowly at first but then with more vigor. The feeling was so real, so potent, he couldn’t deny it.

How often had he wished for just this very thing? The opportunity to go back and undo what had been done, to make it right. This was as it should have been. It would be so simple just to allow it to happen. Deep down he knew that here it would be possible to forget that he had ever murdered this woman, that he had ever married Rowan and then watched her die while his best friend became colder and colder with each passing year. Here, being a king would not be a chore, and as he looked into Katriel’s eyes beneath him and saw her crooked grin, he found it so very tempting.

But there was another elf. Almost unbidden, the memory surfaced of Fiona, taken over by the demon and transformed into an abomination. Her agonized screams still rang in his ears, and even though that other lifetime slipped through his fingers like a half-remembered dream, that part tugged insistently at his conscience.

He had made Fiona a promise.

“I can’t,” he whispered, disengaging from Katriel. He moved over to his side of the bed and got out as she stared at him in confusion, clutching the sheets to her chest.

“But why? What is wrong?”

“This isn’t real.” He refused to look at her, refused to look into those green eyes. He remembered looking into them when he had run his sword through her chest, not quite believing he’d done it even as he watched her life slip away. In those eyes he had seen such utter disappointment. She had hoped to reach him, to appeal to his mercy even though she knew it was hopeless, and he had met her expectations completely. Yet even though this life felt completely real and enticing, he couldn’t stand the thought of Fiona out there suffering. He had to act.

“Maric,” she said softly behind him.

He refused to turn around, clenching his fists from the effort it took.

“Maric,” she said more firmly. “Look at me.” Reluctantly he turned. Katriel stared at him sadly, as if she knew they were about to part. “We could have a life here,” she said. “You don’t need to go back to that other world. You can stay here.”

“Stay here and pretend, you mean.”

“Is it pretend?” She smiled wanly. “What is reality, Maric? What is it, really? You could be happy. Why do you believe so strongly that you must do what makes you unhappy? Have you not earned a little joy?”

Katriel reached out a hand, waiting for Maric to take it so she could draw him back into bed. Her eyes pleaded with him. He hung his head, his heart breaking, and her hand slowly dropped.

She didn’t cry. He turned and walked out of the room quickly, before he changed his mind. The hollowness in his heart felt like it had become a bottomless pit that nothing could ever fill. He shut it, closed it off, and forced himself to become numb. It was something he had done for so long it almost came easily to him now. Numbness had become second nature.

As soon as he stepped out the door, the world changed. He was on a twisted landscape dotted with disconnected walls and doors, as if someone had spread out the pieces of a building without any knowledge of their relation to one another. More incredible by far was the sky, a vast sea of blackness with swirling ribbons of white crossing it. Islands floated above him, some large and seemingly an arm’s length away, and others distant.

Everything had a strangely unnatural sheen, the corner of his vision fuzzing as if none of this were distinct enough to be real. He watched as the patchwork walls slowly moved, forming different configurations in front of him and then slowly reassembling themselves. One wall quietly disintegrated into the ground, disappearing entirely. Small floating lights caught his attention, bright wisps speeding across the landscape not far from where he stood.

This was the Fade. Men came here to dream, and supposedly only mages were able to cross it while awake, but here he was. Had he fallen asleep? Had the demon trapped him here somehow, and that was why he remained even though he was awake? What was happening to his body in the real world?

None of his questions had answers. He stood there on that plain, feeling a dry breeze brush across his face. At least his proper armor and clothing had reappeared upon leaving his chambers. That was something. His chambers, and the rest of the palace with it, had simply disappeared. As had Katriel. He looked around but saw no trace that any of it had ever existed, and felt a pang of regret for what he had lost.

But it hadn’t been real, had it? She had been a dream conjured up for his benefit, intended to hold him here. He had to hope that meant there was a way out.

But how does one leave the Fade? Looking around, he realized he didn’t have the faintest clue where to go. There were no pathways that led beyond the terrain on which he stood. He saw no structures, no glowing portals or anything of the kind. Just the doorways that led … where, exactly? Beyond what Fiona had spoken of that night outside the Deep Roads, he knew nothing of the dream realm.

“Lost already, I see,” murmured a voice behind him.

He spun around and froze as he realized it was Katriel. She looked as he remembered her best, in the sturdy leathers she had worn during their travels in the Deep Roads. A dagger sat in her belt sheath and her blond curls fluttered in the breeze that swept across the field. Katriel regarded him now with an amused look, but appeared content to wait for him to speak.

“You … you’re not here,” he stammered.

“Apparently I am.”

“But you’re not Katriel.”

“So sure of that, are you?” She walked toward him, her amusement dissolving into an annoyed frown. “I know you well enough, Maric, and you’re no scholar. You know as much about the Fade as you do about winemaking. You need my help.”

“Your help,” he repeated dumbly.

She arched a brow at him. “Do you think you can make it through the Fade on your own? I led you through the Deep Roads, once. I can lead you through here. If that’s what you really want.”

Maric retreated several steps. This looked like Katriel and sounded like Katriel, but this wasn’t some dream of his any longer. She had to be some kind of demon, something that had followed him out of his dream once it failed its mission. Now it was trying to lure him back. His heart beat rapidly in his chest as he drew his sword, brandishing it at her warily. “Get back,” he growled. “You are trying to trap me again. But I won’t stay; I need to get out of here!”

Katriel seemed unimpressed, glancing at his blade with barely concealed contempt. “That’s not truly your sword, Maric. You must realize that.”

“I’m willing to take my chances it’ll still cut you.”

She nodded, smirking ever so slightly. “Maybe so. What do you intend to do, then? Run about aimlessly? Pinch yourself until you wake up? Loghain is not here to save you, love. You need my help.”

“I’ll not be led anywhere by a demon!”

“Oh, yes.” She glared at him pointedly. “Good idea. You wouldn’t want to run headlong into someone’s sword, after all.”

Maric staggered back. The way she looked at him so knowingly with those green eyes cut him to the quick. Yet it couldn’t be possible, any more than it was in the dream. “I left you in that dream,” he insisted. “I had to! I made a promise… .”