I dreamed I was standing in the middle of an open field.
I was a child, here. Seven years old, short and with long mangy hair, stubborn about my need to wear prescription glasses but forced to use them because of the headaches I’d otherwise endure—at that age, I was the trademark of what you would call an all-American boy. I played baseball, I did well in school, attended church regularly. I was rarely prone to bad habits, but the one thing that always got me in trouble was the one thing that could kill me.
Thunderstorms.
One rolled across the winding outskirts of east Texas in a great fog of white. So smoky that the clouds resembled marshmallows finely melted over a brimming fire, it ebbed and contracted as the wind carried it across the state with a casual malevolence only found in nature. Such storms had always fascinated me. Previous viewings in other states did little in comparison to the awesome spectacles that took place in Texas. As such, I had wandered away from home—across the street to the field where, during the summer months, I played baseball with my little league team.
My parents had no idea where I was.
Mom was making dinner.
Dad had yet to come home from work.
I’d been given the perfect opportunity to sneak away.
The first flashes of lightning were like startled insects freed from their inconspicuous homes—one here, one there. They rarely spiderwebbed and only occasionally produced thunder—which, even in its infancy, sounded like great belches from the Gods. I struggled to maintain my position, keeping away from the trees that blanketed the outer sides of the park.
There was one thing I’d always been told—even as a child, when I could just barely walk: When you’re out in a thunderstorm—
Stay away from trees.
The monumental moment in which I would be struck came as no surprise to someone who suffered reoccurring nightmares. There was no reason in the way it happened. Lightning can’t strike twice. It rarely strikes in open fields. But when it does, it rarely strikes anything in them.
That day, I just so happened to be in that mathematically-improbable spot.
It hit me—hard, right on the top of my head. Supercharging the hairs on my skin, and burning my flesh, my body reeled from an electric shock so immense that it would knock me out for hours on end.
Unlike my regular dreams, I wasn’t viewing myself from the outside—I was actually in my body.
I didn’t feel the impact. I didn’t experience the pain, the confusion, the outright terror as my mind struggled to process the situation. Instead, I looked directly into the face of the beast and waited for my answer.
Something materialized before me.
The flowing skirt of snow, the immense obsidian eyes—
The flash cleared and with it the memory of my past. In its place came the Kelda—who, hovering in midair, descended toward me with a grace incapable of any living thing.
Jason, she said.
I couldn’t speak. Shock might’ve played a big factor in that, as well as my dream-like state, but I understood everything.
A great wrong has been committed in the grand scheme of things, she continued, her countenance not faltering once as she lowered to just a foot above the ground. Kaldr Winters has faltered. They have usurped the destined ruler. Guy Winters has been taken.
“What?” I asked.
The breath parting from my lips whispered before me in a low white hue, disappearing moments afterward as the storm raged on above. The Kelda’s face remained unmoving—stone-like even in her eyes. Her thin, nearly-invisible lips parted, paused, then parted again before she said, I do not know the answers to the questions you speak. I hear them, child, in my head, my heart—but my passion calls me to my child. He has not been taken by a man of mortal flesh. Those who bay within the night have sought to call him Justice.
Lightning flashed. The rustle of leaves, followed by the downpour of them past her figure, shrouded the Kelda’s form.
Her mouth opened in silent admission of surprise.
My guts strangled themselves.
“Where is he?” I asked, stepping forward, breaking free of what I imagined must have been some supernatural hold. “Where is he, Kelda? Tell me where he is.”
It is a trap. They wish to lure you into their den.
“I don’t care! I can’t leave him to die!”
I hear truly the matter of your heart, dear Jason DePella, Warm Flesh and Bóndi of Kaldr Prince Guy Anthony Winters. I speak only one thing: The dogs live underground. They will not be hard to find.
The sky opened to let forth peals of rain, which struck the Kelda and surrounded her porcelain skin with globules of ice that resembled hailstones. She looked briefly to those pooling before her, then lifted her head to train her eyes on me.
She said nothing.
I only faltered.
Such a pull was indicative of a dream-like state.
I was waking up.
And when I did, I knew what I would do.