My Warden (COMPLETED)

Dreams

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Lana dug her staff deeper into the dirt that stopped being stone floor twenty five meters back, and left it free standing. She needed that line against the horizon as her eyes twisted towards the rotating parlor above her head. It hung at not quite a 45 degree angle with the ground and no discernible way to climb up to it. Of course, it was where she was waiting for her.

"I really don't want to see her. She hates me," Jowan whined, throwing off Lana's concentration.

"Fine," she shook her head. "You can both wait here," she said to the two spirits following her.

"As you say, Ser," Nathaniel would have saluted if he could. He didn't turn around or wander off, instead his corporeal form seemed to fade away into the distance as if he shut down.

"Oh no, I'm not leaving you alone with that one. She's up to something," Jowan complained.

"The commander gave you an order," Nathaniel snapped out of his hazy almost existence just to shout at his fellow spirit.

"Last I checked, I'm not her little soldier boy. I was her friend until she went behind my back and..."

Lana waved off their bickering that amounted to nothing. It was one thing when Anders and the real Nathaniel would tear into each other. They had their own platforms, their reasons for fighting. Even if it was pointless squabbling it bore the weight of reality. The way the spirits competed it felt more like a play being poorly acted from a pair of non-actors who had their lines fed to them. It was the lack of interesting curses she missed the most.

Her current concern was in solving the puzzle. That was always what she hid behind: puzzles, games, tricks. A series of three colors lay upon the ground, but each stone had a symbol etched in gold inside it. So, was it the symbol that was important, or the color? Perhaps both. Needing to start somewhere, Lana yanked up her staff and jabbed the end into the green circle with the symbol that looked like an M baring a forked tongue. A sound like a great bell tower bonging out the time echoed through the ground and a single stair rose.

"Okay, this might be easier than I thought," she said aloud and pressed upon the blue color. The lone stair retreated back from where it came and a heart stopping BWAM shattered up her knees. Lana threw her hands over her ears to minimize her hearing loss. Both spirits stopped their bickering to glower at her. "If it's so easy, you do it!" she shouted at them. It took her a few more tries, and a few more BWAMS, before she figured out it was based upon complimentary colors and the runes were just to throw her off. After pairing the blue and orange, the last stair rose and connected with the floating platform.

She took one step onto it when Jowan reached out and snagged her hand. So much time in the fade, and it unnerved her how lifelike he felt. It wasn't just a warmth, but a solidness to him. She believed there was blood pumping through his body, muscles shifting beneath the skin of his fingers. But it didn't seem possible at all. Jowan was dead.

"You're not going alone," he said.

"Why?"

"I'm not about to let her have my meal ticket."

Of course, Lana shook her head. "Here I was thinking you might have developed a latent case of compassion, silly me." She was being silly. This wasn't Jowan. He or it wasn't capable of changing his spots, they didn't do that. Yanking up her staff, Lana hitched her waning belt higher up and began climbing up the stairs. It was in some ways comparable to scaling those hanging metal staircases wound so tight you grow disoriented in the rapid twisting. The fear of falling to your doom was certainly a comparable aspect in both. She had to keep her eyes shut tight or the reorientation as her foot and body moved through space to line up with the stair would catch her and the panic could cause her to fall. Climbing upward twisted her entire frame into the new dimensions until she finally stopped at the top of the platform.