When was this nightmare going to end?
The floor was cold under his bare feet. The moonlight faded as he left the ruined phone behind and strode back to his bed. This was enough!
He was going to wake up, somehow; he was going to leave his imaginary world of Falconfar behind and go watch a… No, no, he was going to read a good book. A book written by someone else, one that had nothing at all to do with wizards and dragons and Dark Helms and the soaring castles of Falconfar. He was…
Coming to a stop, disgusted. Staring up at him, she reeked of blood and urine and… Hell, look at all the blood!
Must wake up, must jolt myself out of this somehow.
Rod reached out an angry hand. "Come on, get up and out of here! Get-"
Matted black hair lashed his fingers. Beyond it her shoulder felt solid. Hard and real… and quivering under his fingers.
He snatched his hand back. "Get out, damn you!"
Her head sank down, night-black hair hiding that pleading face, and she collapsed into sobs.
Rod waved the dagger wildly in the air, feeling very far indeed from being a hero of Falconfar or anywhere else, and wished-God, how he wished- he'd wake up, and leave all this behind.
The Aumrarr weren't real; they were something he'd invented for Falconfar, a race of warrior-women who did good, flying over the forests of the dream-realm with their long, snow-white wings, taking messages from one hold to another, and fighting wolves and worse.
Hmmph. Since Holdoncorp's game designers had gotten their grubby hands on Falconfar, much worse. The Dark Helms, for one, and…
The dying Aumrarr slid sideways off his bed, dragging his sheets with her. They were now more red than white, and there was a puddle of blood on his mattress.
"Out!" he roared again, waving the dagger as if it were some sort of magic wand that could banish her and her mess, and take him into comforting wakefulness in his favorite chair three rooms away, all at once.
She was now arching and shaking in agony, her sobs as faint and strangled as the mewings of a kitten, but those long, trembling fingers were… were reaching out to clutch him around the ankles!
Rod jerked back. Too late. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and he had to slam his hand down onto the bed, dagger and all, to keep from falling. His knuckles burned, and with a snarl he bent over and grabbed at her shoulders, trying to pluck her away-
Pain. Sharp, stabbing… Finger sliced open on jagged metal. He'd cut himself on her effing armor!
Rod Everlar flung up his hand and stared at the blood and the throbbing wound.
Oh, Jesus Christ. I am awake.
He swayed, shaking his hand as if he could wave his cut away, and shaking his head even harder. This couldn't be happening; this wasn't happening! Dreams just didn't become real like this.
And then the woman at his feet clawed at his leg and curled her shoulder up against him. He flinched away from the sharpness of her torn armor, reeling and almost falling.
And then he was falling, hands waving wildly. Flashlight gone, dagger bouncing onto the bed, sitting down helplessly hard against it as blazing emerald eyes and desperate fingers clutched at him like talons… Her breath was warm and smelled spicy, almost like cinnamon, as her softness glided up his own hairy skin. Rod fumbled to get his feet under himself, to be able to-and then stiffened. Warm, wet lips were sucking at his injured hand!
He tried to yank it away, but her cool, trembling fingers were surprisingly strong as she held him, and where her mouth and tongue touched, there was… icy relief. Pain ebbing swiftly.
There was a sort of glow down there, around her cheeks, as if her mouth was full of dancing blue moonlight that he'd be able to see when she lifted her head.
She did that, eyes very large and dark, and her mouth was briefly full of blue fire.
And Rod's hand tingled. The pain was gone. Gone with the cut and the blood. His fingers were bare, clean, and… whole.
She held them up for him to see better as he curled and flexed them in astonishment.
"Please aid us, Dark Lord," she murmured, the purr stronger and the sobbing sound almost gone. There was still pain in her face, but she seemed stronger, somehow.
She'd been strong enough to overbalance and pounce on him, that much was certain.
"Please. You are Falconfar's only hope, and my only hope, too."
Rod Everlar stared into those anxious, beautiful emerald eyes, and took a deep breath. He managed to sound fairly calm, he thought, as he asked, "Who are you? And what did you just do to me?"
"Lord Archwizard, I am Taeauna, Taeauna of the Aumrarr. I did nothing, 'twas your blood that healed me. And yourself, for you are of Falconfar as surely as I am."
Tay-awna. Taeauna of the Aumrarr, the winged women he'd thought up. Rod knew he was doing a lot of head shaking, but he just couldn't seem to stop finding reasons to do so. Falconfar?
The world he'd dreamed up. Or rather dreamed about, night after night, until the images had grown so vivid that he could recall them end-to-end upon awakening, and write them down.
Falconfar, that rolling land of vast forests and distant snow-tipped mountains where castles rose up from bare hilltops and warriors rode out to hunt stags. And magic worked. And monsters lurked.
Falconfar: a realm of wizards and dragons and the Aumrarr. Shaped by his imagination, his dreams. A place that wasn't real, couldn't be real, a world he'd copyrighted for God's sake, and written seven books about, and…
"Dark Lord?" Taeauna asked him, her impossibly white face within easy reach of his arm, its sheen of sweat shining in the moonlight. "You seem… angered. Mind-mazed. Please aid us. I–I am desperate."
Dark Lord. There was that phrase again. What was a Dark Lord? He knew what the Dark Helms were: Holdoncorp's creations, sinister villains, ruthless slayers in black armor. The Holdoncorp game designers had thought up many smaller mischiefs, too, but he knew about them. He knew all about Falconfar.
So what was a Dark Lord, and how had he become one?
He stared into the Aumrarr's gravely anxious gaze, and then around his room. The severed phone, the blood-soaked bed sheets, the sliced-off end of an armor strap that was dangling from Taeauna's shoulder to brush his own gut. He could feel its caress.
He wasn't dreaming. This was all real.
Or he was losing his mind.
His eyes fell to his wrinkled boxer shorts, covered with its familiar greeting of "Hello, Sexy!" as well as spatters of dark, wet blood that wasn't his own. Blood that shouldn't-couldn't-be there. But was.
"Suppose you tell me," he said carefully, "how I became a 'Dark Lord.' And what this evil is, that I've done. Uh, and who 'us' is, that I've done it to. And what you want of me."
The Aumrarr stared at him. "So it's true. One of the wizards has stolen your memories."
"Stolen my-?"
She flinched back from his shout as if he'd thrust one of those black swords right into her, and Rod swallowed whatever he'd been going to shout, waved an angry hand through the air between them as if to clear something aside, and snapped, "Explain. Please."
"Yes, Lord Archwizard," she agreed hastily, sliding sideways off him with more grace than he'd thought any gravely injured person would be able to manage. On her knees, shattered armor dangling from her, she began, "There are not many of us Aumrarr left, for Falconfar has grown darker. There are ever more Dark Helms, the wizards command fearsome beasts to prowl and strike at will, and…"
Rod found himself staring at Taeauna's front, bared almost down to her crotch. He'd seen her intestines spilling sickeningly out of a great gash, but that wound was now gone. Under a darkening smear of drying blood, her stomach was flat and whole.
"How did you…?" he blurted, gesturing almost helplessly at her.