Vermilion Rain: An FE3H Story

Part 1: White Clouds. Chapter 1: Awakening

Who has successfully run from something in a dream? More often, even in the most dire seeming circumstance, when you're dreaming, your limbs feel leaden, stiff, and immobile, no matter how much you will them to carry you onwards. Even on the rare occasion when you can convince your limbs to act, sometimes the rest of the dream compensates by molding the shadowy world around you into a sort of treadmill, immovable, inescapable. Before you know it, the thing chasing you (for often in such dreams, there is something) is right on your heels, panting and snorting, trying to chew you up or grind you to pieces. But somehow, impossible as it seems, it, too, seems stuck in the same treadmill.

I don't know how I know this experience. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, it felt familiar to be chased and immobile in that way when asleep. Somewhere, I'd heard that was actually your body's defense mechanism, that when you're dreaming, the body disconnects the brain from the limbs to avoid injuring yourself in your sleep. I don't know how I know that either.

It was just such a dream that I found myself in. There was a beast at my heels, something enormous, reptilian, with a long snout. Something like a cross between an anteater and a dinosaur of some kind. And it was pursuing me. I could feel its bulk pounding on the earth beneath my feet, even as I fled. I turned back and its eyes, glowing red like coals, transfixed. It rose up on its hind legs and drew in a breath.

All at once, it spat. A great ball of fire came hurtling towards me. My heart pounded in my chest. I knew I couldn't get hit by it; I'd die. I tried to swerve out of its way, tried to dive to the ground, but my leaden limbs wouldn't respond. My breathing picked up a pace, two, and I watched the expanding golden orb race towards me. I braced myself for impact.

And then... the leaden stiffness of running in a dream faded. Slowly, I became aware that it was being replaced by a different stiffness; the uncomfortable stiffness of waking. Waking as if from a drugged sleep. Back and forth my mind swung, as if deciding between the two. On the one side, a beast and the orb of flames. On the other, the uncomfortable wakening to an uncertain dawn. Back and forth, my semi conscious mind swung. Somehow, neither seemed... normal. Something was strange about it. But there was a voice on the waking side. And vaguely, I felt the sensation of a hand on my shoulder, a hand shaking me, urging me awake.

And, after all, it couldn't be worse than running from that creature for all eternity, could it?

So, slowly, I allowed myself to be shaken awake. Whatever new world awaited would have to do, and I would have to be ready for it. My eyelids fought to pry themselves open, as the voice began to solidify, take shape, take on words that I understood. I felt my breathing. And so, I willed myself out of the dream.

Besides, I thought vaguely as the world took shape around me, it was almost... time to... begin...