Under normal circumstances gold tended to predominate Emmaline dreams. Vast chambers filled with it, great cities made of it, heaping chests overflowing with it, gold in every form and variety imaginable. More rarely she suffered from nightmares, sometimes being back in the Emir’s harem, sometimes watching endless columns of sun-bleached dead march relentlessly over desert sands. Her current nightmare was, therefore, something beyond her experience. A giant ugly woman dressed for a Reikish fair, shoved a huge wooden spoon containing gloopy unappetizing porridge into Emmaline’s mouth over and over, completely ignoring her refusal to swallow it. Her cheeks budged with the compacted slop and it spilled down her front, over her chest in slow slimy rivulets. The woman’s pink pigtail wig kept slipping, revealing a stubbly bald scalp that made her look like Gerd as she crooned.

“Just a little more, he likes a witch, just a little more he likes a witch,” the first syllable of witch seeming to somehow contain a vast gush of wind, like an eagle beating its wings. Suddenly she was vomiting, but not porridge, her ejecta was dark with wine or maybe rum and she clung to the railing of a ship as it rode up monstrous gray waves and then plunged down the other side, plowing great sheets of white water up over her bow. Water whipped all around her in a storm, soaking her to the skin. Canvas snapped deafeningly and lines and timbers squealed in protest. A dashing looking sailor with a blade of Dark Elven make was shouting at her, he shook her by the shoulder and pointed aft towards the cabin, riding the heaving deck like a trapeze artist as he did so. Bile and acid burned at the back of her throat as she gripped the rail. Groggily, her eyes tracked backwards towards where he was pointing. A beastman with the head of a stag burst from the doorway of the blazing building, breakfast was evidently burning by the smell that seemed to cling to everything. It lifted a bloody axe and shook it at her roaring and spraying spittle out in a fast funnel. Raising her hands she sent a beam of porridge pouring fourth to encase the thing, the thick gloopy mess hardening to lumpy stone in the vague shape of a charging beastman.

“Just a little more,” the fat woman/man demanded, jamming another spoonful into Emmaline’s mouth. The Emir nodded, head lolling grotesquely on his broken neck, face blackened and swollen, the ligature marks of the garrote around his throat.

“You shouldn’t let your dreams upset you so,” Albrecht the Magnificent admonished, waggling a finger before turning to vomit over the rail of the heaving ship.

“Emmaline,” the dangerous looking sailor bellowed, reaching out a calloused hand to clasp hers.

“Emmaline,” Amal shouted, a dizzying vista extending far below him, climbing something vast and thrashing.

“Emmaline,” the thief called, lifting a pistol to fire over her shoulder at some unseen threat.

“Emmaline,” something vast and ageless, whispered. Suddenly she was a vast golden statue, herself but other, sitting cross legged atop some ancient temple looking out over a forest of impossible lushness, her eyes giant faceted sapphires, each facet reflecting an identical statue with identical facets, each holding identical images. She opened her mouth to scream and birds of impossible plumage burst from the forest below, great fish leaped from the ocean, scales flashing, rodents fled into the corners and alleys of the burning street. A dizzying plethora of kaleidoscopic images that spun around her in ever increasing fury, forming themselves into a tremendous whirlpool that sucked her down and down…

 

Stone slammed into her belly as she came to, behind her something vast swooped up and away. She tumbled and rolled, somehow, perhaps due to her ample ballast, coming up on her knees. Cold mountain air rushed through her hair and she vomited explosively, porridge and bile splattering the stone in front of her. The tempest of colors faded gray and then solidified and she felt her belly cramp painfully. She vomited again, managing to lean forward to press her palms against the stone. Bright lights stormed about her vision for a moment, mostly gold, but with hints of green, and purple, blue and grey. She realized that her inner eye was wide open and she instinctively shut her inner eye. The world returned to its normal color and Emmaline pressed a trembling palm to her head. She whispered a spell to herself, a simple foolish can trip meant to banish hangovers. Her rebellious stomach settled, Though it didn’t still the trembling in her body, a byproduct of adrenaline, or being sick rather than whatever had been in the porridge. She was on a wide stone platform of some kind, hewed out of the side of the mountain, behind her was an incredible view of the World’s Edge mountains, sweeping down from snowcapped crags to the rocky pass and even hints of green fields beyond. A tumbling mass of white water turned itself into the broad silvery ribbon of a distant river as it collected tribute from each mountain it passed. Turning away from the vertiginous drop before she grew too dizzy she saw that where the stone platform met the mountain a large door had been carved, the style of architecture unknown to her.

“Where on Taal’s scruffy arse am I?” she whispered to herself, wrapping her arms around her chest against the chill wind.