[i]1128 Titans’ Rest
30th Year of the Undying’s Reign
Centurion Keep, Avless
24 Hours After the Taking of Aveless[/i]
[hr]
	The wind was asleep that day. There was not the smallest breath to expunge the decay from the surrounding air.

	Sleep was a strange curse. Reika could not find the words to explain exactly what it was. The elders spoke of the life after death, and of dreams, and of how they were connected. Dreams could be visions into the next world, or something beyond visions, like a fraction of the soul passing through the misty veil of the mind and acting on behalf of the original.

	That was how it was described to him, anyway. He did not believe he had ever dreamt in his life. What he once thought were dreams as a tribal youth were actually spells of sleepwalking and wisps of memory like fading smoke. The content of the wisps were truly terrifying, and Reika could only wish they had been dreams. Not possessing full faculty of his mind was his greatest fear.

	Regardless of the ponderings on dreams, they were simply the consequence of sleep, and sleep was perhaps even more difficult to explain. It was a curse in its necessity, a flagrant waste of time. Why was not simply remaining immobile just as restive? Why could the conscious mind not invoke the same healing powers? How is the mind capable of blocking the memory of an entire stretch of hours, and to what end does this occur?

	These were simply the rambling thoughts of a very tired man, for Reika had not slept in four days.

	The swordsman sat atop a parapet above Avless' Keep, legs dangling over a sheer drop. He rested one hand between his thighs to support himself and the other on Sanmeogan's hilt. He had been there for quite some time. He was not counting the hours, but he might have been counting the frequency of the explosions occurring on the mountain before him, if he could even remember them. The arcane bursts seemed to be growing further apart.

	Reika looked down between his feet. In his weariness, a single fractured moment of losing consciousness would send him toppling over a hundred feet to the stones below. Death would await him if he was lucky, shattered bones if he was not. Testing the necessity of sleep against certain peril was at least keeping him occupied.

	The Keep offered quite a view: the trampled and burning Ruby Citadel and murky sea beyond on one end, and on the other, the abutting mountain - a great steely slab cutting into the clouds like a broad fang. Reika enjoyed the latter. Even in the falling ash, it was a spot of nature, and reminded him of his home. At the very least it was a place to breathe after those [i]urfe'as[/i] tunnels!

	The memory of those grueling battles, still fresh in his arms and legs, set his mind on edge, willing him to scrub the blood from his skin once again. He was never hesitant to kill when it furthered a cause, but Sanmeogan's hunger took hold at times, changing him. After so much bloodletting, the walls of the tunnels had been painted red, each one snaking out like a vein clogged with lifeless meat. The blood permeated his skin, such that he did not think he could ever rid himself of it.

	Reika spun off the parapet and took the stone stairs down into the Keep. The sharp stench of charr faded somewhat, replaced with the odour of sweat and sickness and wood-fire as he entered the Great Hall. He quickly found a water barrel and turned the tap, washing the clamminess from his hands with a vigorous scrub. It sated the blood-feeling, at least for a time.

	Time moved strangely when one did not sleep, much like being inebriated. Only the moment existed, the past soon forgotten, the future ignored. He soon found himself sliding onto a bench with the rest of his strange unit. Some of them he would be glad to work with - some of them he would not. Regardless, he did not speak. It was not a time for speaking. He pulled a piece of bread from his sack and ate mechanically before leaning forward and resting his eyes.

	Time moved strangely. Perhaps he slept, perhaps he did not. A lead voice dragged him out of the waters of his mind.

	"Let's move," said Verse, the latest in the line of his commanding officers. He had seen too many to see her as anything more than a messenger from the Second Legion's masters. Duty called, and Reika answered, standing wordlessly on aching legs.