In the beginning of the dream, there was darkness. Then, myriads of distant stars lit up throughout the void and familiar eerie whisper was heard.
[Ascended! Prepare for your third trial!]
As starlight started to fade, whisper continued.
[Five brave ones… welcome to the Nightmare!]
As inner tapestry of Nightmare Spell faded from the view, young explorer saw the frozen wasteland with occasional glimpses of buried parts of the forlorn city. The wall of small but persistent hail prevented from seeing more than a few kilometers away, even if he was just an intangible mass of something, looking from the bird's flight height. As well as in previous trials, time started to go backwards, though the day-night cycle seemed slow. Hail ended, icy hills receded, opening now only half buried city, a giant wall in the far end rebuilt itself and encircled the vast territory dividing the remnants of giant settlement in several parts. As nights and days changed one another, the city almost completely came in view, half of it thoroughly destroyed, half with signs of occasional destruction and desolation, but then snowstorm begin to grow, and city drowned again.
At some moment, time start to run backwards even faster, eventually everything was covered in some sort of translucent veil and mountains with other various landmarks start appearing out of thin air in a distance. Veil disappeared, weather changed, cycles continued and eventually furious snowstorm, impossible to see through, came and go. Finally the heavily guarded port city came to view, myriads of Nightmare Creatures sieging it.
Despite seeing all-out battle below, the only audible sound was wails of impenetrable snowstorm, and winds inside, their direction and force, was difficult to understand. When Brail tried to concentrate on receeding and clearly unnatural blizzard time reversal finally stopped and his ephemeral body, or soul, or in which state he was, was pulled towards the wall of snow with tremendous speed. He sensed like something eerie and powerful was approaching and instinctively closed his eyes, but after several seconds, felt like sensitivity of his body returned and air around him become strange. As if he suddenly was in small, enclosed space, like in one of these mechanical coffins, damned scientists tested his cohort's capabilities with, before the expedition.
Opening his eyes, Brail saw the same picture as before, tall mountain ranges, unfamiliar night sky with beautiful aurora and seemingly a lot of stars. A pity that this beauty was barely visible through the wall of snow, even though that blizzard itself now was significantly weaker. Another obstacle was narrow front window of some sort of heavy military transport of the lost world he was in. He wanted to look around, and assess the situation he appeared to be in, but was immediately distracted by the unfamiliar voice coming from the seat in front of the vehicle.
"..ourse I can get us there in a day if we leave the mountains and drive along the coastal thoroughfare."
Brail froze for a second trying to understand who driver was speaking with, but after couple of seconds noticed a questioning look in the rearview mirror.
"Are you okay, Captain?"
'He didn't call me by name. That's not good. Or my name is Captain?'
"Yes. Yes, I'm fine."
"So, what should I do? Do we proceed with this path or go the faster way?"
'Decisions, decisions, how the hell do I need to make them if I don't know anything? Ok, the first rule, if something works, don't touch it.'
"Just proceed with the first plan."
"Yes, sir."
Brail took a couple careful steps lowering himself back from the driver's cabin and leaned to the slightly vibrating from the ride metal wall. How the hell with such landscape and obvious absence of normal road this transport was moving so smoothly? That was what his old man was always talking about, technologies still not implemented for the Dream Realm?
'Heh. I actually experiencing them myself now, in a Nightmare, no less.'
But enough of this, first he needed to start concentrating on differences in the body. Closing his eyes, Brail didn't find any significant changes. Same body type, same sex, different appearance, but last one doesn't matter. On the positive note, person, who's place he took was clearly an Ascended, otherwise that would be a disaster, and this body was much stronger than his own, good. On the negative side, this exact body…
"Why the hell am I short?"
"You said something, Captain?"
Opening his eyes he saw strange look of a small and strangely unattractive young woman in the same uniformish suit as first guy, standing right before him, half turned.
"Nothing. Nothing, just thinking out loud."
Slightly moving her brow, but otherwise not betraying a hint of emotion, she nodded, turned, and walked to the driver's cabin, like nothing happened. She asked something the guy about visibility and clearly dissatisfied started peering in the front window.
"Captain, can you come here for a second, please?"
Not quite grasping the situation and hierarchy in the group, Brail obediently came forward. Women motioned to the window and said in irritated and tense, but careful tone.
"This snow is clearly jamming our devices. Even though we don't have access to the command network, we still can do at least something with sensors, but to fine-tune them in these conditions to at least appropriate level, I need to understand how far and what exactly you can and cannot see, Sir. I think, with your help, we can focus our sensors better, improve detection accuracy and avoid anomalies."
"Avoid anomalies? In this hell? Very funny."
Driver guy was giggling nervously, clutching tightly on the steering wheel.
"Nobody asked you, your job right now is to drive, so drive. I will try to salvage the situation with surroundings visibility as I can."
'They are bickering like a couple. Are they? Well, that's none of my business. Hmm.. what should I tell them.'
"I can't sense too far. The blizzard is interfering with my detection too. So, we need to work with what we have."
"Can I check for myself?"
'What? Some type of ability or what she's talking about?'
"Sure, go on."
As Brail start feeling a new, almost imperceptible sensation, girl start to stare intently beyond the windshield. After a dozen seconds or so, young women let go of her ability, frowned and walked towards the next section of the vehicle. Sitting down at the dining area near red headed woman, she pulled out a screen, did nothing for couple of seconds, and asked her for the communicator. Receiving a strange rectangular translucent thing, she started tapping something under the frowning gaze of another team member.
Understanding that outside situation most likely won't resolve in the near couple of minutes, or hours, Brail start looking where he can rest for a bit, to calm down and think of what he was going to do. Plopping on the couch in the other end of dining area, young ascended pulled his legs, crossed hands, closed eyes, as he always did when he needed to think deeply, and tried to distance himself from the surroundings.
'Summarizing what I learnt before approaching the seed and what I saw after, this is what I have. This is clearly pre-exodus Antarctica. The city I saw in the beginning is coastal Siege Capital, considering surroundings, most likely the one recon team reported. So, they were right, that's good to know. That narrowing down couple lines of thoughts, but overall. It looks like we screwed.'
Yes, the only widely known conflict after Nightmare Spell descended on the last divine world in this region, was evacuation of human population from the dying continent. A literal catastrophe, to say the least. With all the information available, he could understand what is happening in general in one or other place. But not what his exact situation was, was he in the beginning of the evacuation or near the end, was his team members near him or spread through the entire continent, third nightmares were known to be vast. And most importantly, what his cohort possible goals were.
Cohort. Assigned team was a strange group, but they were experienced awakened, and he would rather be with them now, than with this bunch of idiots. Brail didn't know what his current supposed subordinates did, what their tasks are, and where they were heading.
'There were too many tiny screens on the dashboard to get all the info in these couple seconds I had been there. I'll check later. Why are they running back and forth, weren't they working on sensors or something? Just let me think, don't disturb the atmosphere.'
He couldn't just straight up come to these people and start explaining that he, in fact, is not their Captain. That they were only temporal beings, who in the grand scheme means nothing, and must drop everything and help him and only him, because they knew and already experienced Nightmares themselves. Would be convinient, sure, but he learned on loud examples, what such behavior usually leads to. Humanity found only a small number of Seeds, containing the old Earth events, in last decades, but almost each time someone tried to do such a stupid thing outright upon the entry.
'They are our people, they would understand. Yeah, right. I hope our cohort won't have… what was it… Darwin Award nominees?'
But considering that almost each time somebody miraculously finished trials even after some cretin tried to ruin it from the beginning, gathered information was enough to establish at least a minimum number of reasonable rules for such situations.
'Follow protocol, assess the situation, find members of your cohort, determine the conflict, plan and proceed step by step. Find a way to cooperate with the Nightmare inhabitants. Blend in. Open up only if you are ready for consequences and can minimize recoil from inhabitants. Think, think, think.'
The situation was vague, there was no masters in this transport, and apparently there was none in nearest snow piles. So no one from his cohort was close, but it was question of time, effort, and luck. The conflict was related to one part of Antarctica campaign, though was not exactly clear which one. The start, the end, in between? He could start planning only when he will have more info, at least for the long term. For the short term, though, he had no complaints: safely get to wherever they are driving, do not start the fights. That's all he needed to do. Maybe explore this miracle of engineering for a bit.
'Well, these several hissing sounds was most likely from sensors small tech girl was fixing. I though she can do it just from the screen, but apparently, even in this age some things required manual approach. Which means she can demonstrate me how this wonderful machinery works.'
Sure, he could learn it from the professors back in the academy, but then it was unnecessary, and now he was right inside one of War Realm's highly technological vehicles, so it suddenly become very interesting.
Moving forward, Brail was most likely in command of this heavy thing and a little team of four. Unassuming tech girl, silent redhead lady and nervous but seemingly obedient driver. All look like kind-of-serious but relatively weak awakened. Clearly part of organization, probably one of old clans or government army, there was no time remembering old badges or other related signs, though the vehicle looks rich, so most likely former. Apparently, they were making some sort of a delivery, assuming non-combatant type of group. Local communicational network didn't work, so they couldn't call or send telegram, or whatever message sending technologies they had before the Dream Realm, which only confirmed his thoughts. And he was apparently their leader or protector, or both. No. Worse, but most likely, he himself was the envoy, and awakened – only support attendants. Where he needs to find the message or package and who was the reciever?
'I will ask the team later. Team, who walking back and forth last how many minutes? No matter. Later, aaall lat… er… yeah…'
He was dosing off from the kind little lullaby of slightly bumpy ride, but before he could, an air changed near him, and he opened eyes. A redheaded team member was looking at him with concern.
"Sir, you promised that I can relax a little as I finish my part."
"Sure, if everything is done, you can go sleep a little."
Redhead beauty pursued her lips and frowned.
"Thanks, but we can't complete sensors inspection without your confirmation."
'Oh common, you want to sleep, I want to sleep, just stop asking for permissions.'
"I trust your judgment regarding technical questions. You have a permission to complete it without me."
"Sir, I can't scan your hand without you."
"Oh, well. Fine, let's go to the machinery room."
Neutral voice from the hallway suddenly cut into the conversation:
"We just need you to come to these wall screens, Sir."
'No interesting machinery today, it seems.'
Untangling from his position, Brail come to the screens, clearly not understanding where he needed to use his hand to finish this boring ordeal. After couple of seconds, with two tiring sighs, each woman took one of his hands and brought them to two similar screens with soft clicks. Soft clicks somehow sounded like they were going from his wrists instead of the screen. For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.
After, the only thing Brail could do is to try to panic less than he was panicking.
Small women pulled his hand to one side with all her weight, turning him and dragging low, while redhead tried to dislocate his shoulder and twist right arm. They wouldn't be able to do that, being the awakened against the Master, but with the 'engineering miracle' stopping too abruptly and two unnoticed legs hitting him hard under each of his knee, he quickly ended up face planted on the floor. Brail tried to summon winds, but couldn't do shit, his powers simply refused to work. And on top of that, the second he fell, a tremendous weight pressed on him, preventing any movement. Halberd pressing against the neck. Two swords threaten to slice his legs.
"Kimmy, are you sure?"
Low concerned voice boomed from behind.
"He can't see in the dark, he tried to sleep, he doesn't know where he is, and on top of that…"
The unassuming girl, with now cold furious gaze, grappling his left arm with all four limbs, Kimmy, apparently, lingered turning to look at Brail's panicked face. Her sentence was finished by not so simple and not so obedient anymore driver, who suddenly, instead of being nervous, looked like professional killer.
"If it was Captain. We would all be dead."
'Fuck.'