The Last Bastion

Rolan remained silent for a good few seconds, long enough for the look in Tristen's eyes to change from an intense question to a confused stare into space. He was thinking furiously. My name is on my blog, and my dreams are too. Most Poisoned I meet, and a good few healthy people, will know who I am if I tell them. I'll have to start going by an alias, but for now... Rolan sighed. I can't in good conscience leave Tristen to the apparent beginnings of madness. My instincts tell me the dreams cause insanity, and that my help ends the dreams, at least for one night, so... I have to try.

"Yes, Tristen." Tristen, his attention having wandered, took a moment to remember what the question had been.
"It's real? As real as my dreams?"
A chill ran down Rolan's back. He grimaced at his own squeamishness, and stiffened his spine. "I don't know. But I can find out." His mind was made up, and looking at Tristen's tormented eyes only made him more sure that his decision was the right one. "Do you have a couch I can sleep on? I'll need you to go to your room and sleep... and I'll try to find you."

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Rolan lay back on Tristen's couch closed his eyes, feeling tired as usual. Still, he wasn't sure he could sleep. The look of unabridged terror in Tristen's eyes when he'd told the Poisoned youth that he would need to sleep stayed in Rolan's mind, making him wonder if what he was about to try was wise.
Rolan thrust the thought away, clearing his mind as best he could, but every time he thought he was falling asleep, he woke up again as a result. Realizing that he was trying too hard, he just let his thoughts drift, not totally aware of what he was really thinking. Sleep finally took him.

His feet touched down among the picture frames, their mirrorlike surfaces showing men, women and children of all kinds, in no apparent order. He was facing one that showed his own image-- Did that mean that the girl, Jenna, was-- No, he decided, just that she was asleep. He had to believe that.
Still, how would he find her again? Time to experiment. Reaching down, Rolan scooped up a bit of the gritty light brown dust by his feet. He poured it back onto the ground, then used his shoe to scrape the dust into a little pile. There was no wind here, right? Rolan, setting off to see if he could find Tristen, hoped this would be enough.
As he'd thought, there was no evident pattern to the mirrors. Rolan was normally good at seeing patterns, even odd ones, but not here. He moved in a spiral, checking each one, trying not to look at haunted, sunken faces as he did so. He kept the little mound of dust in front of Jenna's mirror in sight, and noted that the mirror existed on both sides of the frame. Returning to his search, he stopped short. Tristen was in front of him, pure terror in the unseeing look he directed at the frame-dotted horizon. Wasting no time, Rolan touched the picture to enter the dream...

The first impression Rolan got was of darkness. He could barely see three feet in front of him, and what he did see-- black earth spotted with fresh bloodstains-- was not encouraging. His second impression was of pressure. Some kind of force pressed at him from all sides, making him slightly nauseous. It was as if the very air were vibrating, thrumming with sickly feeling. Rolan, his hands clapped over his ears, remembered the ability he seemed to have. He concentrated on imagining this place completely silent. The pressure lessened, then ceased. The air was still, except for a faint whimpering coming from somewhere to Rolan's left.
A flash of lightning, followed barely a second later by a clap of thunder. In the brief flash, Rolan could see Tristen curled up on the ground in a foetal position. All around the boy, and as far as the foothills of a large, rocky mountain, lay armor-clad bodies. The only movement was a multitude of crows pulling grotesquely at the flesh of the corpses. The wind blew in Rolan's face, and it carried an overpowering stench of decay. Resisting the urge to retch, Rolan ran towards where he remembered seeing Tristen, trying not to trip over the bodies. This was easier said than done, in the near-blackness, and only crows taking flight as he approached allowed Rolan to avoid the corpses.
"Tristen! Tristen, get up."
The boy only shivered, shaking his head helplessly. Rolan looked up as another flash came. Was it just him, or were the mountains bigger, seeming to loom ominously over everything? The faint hum was returning, setting Rolan's teeth on edge. But these were not at the forefront of his mind at this moment.
Every single one of the corpses was standing. Every single one was staring in his direction-- or more specifically, staring at Tristen, whose eyes were wide open, as if he couldn't close them. Darkness fell again, and Tristen gibbered quietly to himself as Rolan wondered what he could do to end this dream. This wasn't a single monster, like the kraken, or even a small group. This was an army directly from, well, a nightmare.

Rolan didn't know what would occur during the next flash. He didn't want to. He had a power, didn't he? So use it, you idiot! He shouted at himself. What this dream needs is a little light! He made a throwing motion, and the sky lit up. A dim, blood-red sun lit the sky-- hardly ideal, but at least the only light was no longer from lightning flashes.
A battalion of soldiers stood all around Rolan and Tristen, their pale faces tinted red by the dim sun's light. They all stared into the distance. On the horizon, the only one not dominated by the mountains-- were they smaller, now? And he hadn't seen snow on them before-- appeared another army, moving at a march. The men standing around Tristen and Rolan stayed where they were, staring as if hypnotized at the other group. Their eyes were empty, bringing to mind mannequins with glass beads for eyeballs.

"The waiting is the worst part. Well, that and the end." Rolan jumped. Tristen had come to stand next to him, a haunted look on his face. The half-mad boy tried a smile-- it came out as a grimace of pain. "You were right. It doesn't help to stay on the ground. The dream makes me watch, anyways."
Rolan gulped. The other army was nearly upon them, and he felt as if he had done something wrong by lighting whatever was to come. Unless... unless he could stop it. But this wasn't a job for a giant Rolan, or a chain-wielding mage. To kill in this dream would be a mistake, Rolan somehow felt. A moment later, he knew what he had to do, regardless of whether it would work. He dashed out into the field between the armies.

"STOP!" His shout came out many times magnified, echoing slightly off of the mountains on three sides. The armies, to his relief, stopped. He pressed his advantage. "Why are you fighting?"
A hollow voice spoke. "We fight because we must, to protect those who cannot." As he said this, the soldier, seemingly identical to every other man on the field, stepped out from the army in which Tristen stood. His words were toneless, without inflection, like a robot.
Another stepped from the opposing army. "We fight because we know our enemy will also fight. They will destroy us, if we do not destroy them first." His voice was impossible to tell apart from the other.
Rolan crossed his arms. "And what if both of you agreed not to fight? Would you be content with that?"
The two spoke in unison, hollow voices barely seeming to project past where Rolan stood between two armies. "Our enemy will never stop." The empty eyes, like those of puppets, met. Eyebrows rose in a caricature of surprise.
Rolan uncrossed his arms. "Well, then. If that is how each of you feel, then I suggest we come to a compromise. Any man who chooses not to fight may walk away and fear no harm. I will personally destroy anyone who strikes at a retreating enemy's back."
"You are but a boy." The leader of Tristen's army spoke.
"You speak as one more powerful than you are," mocked the other. "Why should we follow your advice when it is an obvious ploy to save your own skin?"
Rolan shook his head, bluffing. "You think I'm weak? I could destroy both your armies, if I wanted to. But carnage offends me."
"You bluff." The two leaders spoke in unison.

"Then I challenge both of you to a two-versus-one duel."
Rolan wasn't sure why he'd said those words, but they seemed right. He looked carefully at the blade a soldier in one of the armies carried. He concentrated for a moment, and an exact copy appeared in his hand. Now he simply hoped his ability could do what he intended, or he would have to think fast.
This nightmare was apparently set in some kind of medieval time, from the appearance of the swords and bows carried by the soldiers on either side. Rolan closed his eyes briefly, and made himself the most skilled swordsman of all time.

One of the two leaders rushed, yelling an unintelligible war-cry. The other hesitated, then followed. A blade swung at Rolan's head. He ducked aside, marveling at the ease of the movement-- he seemed to almost glide, as if his muscles remembered doing this many times before. The other man's weapon came at him over the first one, and he batted it aside with his lightweight sword. The two swords hammered at him, but he deflected each strike with marvelous ease. Despite himself, he laughed as the two faces got redder and redder, some life appearing to come into the blank eyes.
The two dream-soldiers came at him with identical sword thrusts. Rolan jumped, effortlessly landing with one foot on each blade, driving them into the earth. He lifted his own blade, and made two quick, shallow cuts, one across each man's neck, not deep enough to do more than hurt a bit. Then he leapt free, leaving the two to drag their weapons from the earth.
"I claim victory," he said with a grin.

Nothing more was said. Both armies turned and began to march away. The clouds that hung above the mountains, venting lightning, began to disperse very rapidly, as if being fast-forwarded. The sun rose with the same impossible speed into the sky, its light turning a more natural-looking orange. The space in between the mountains now seemed less forbidding, a rocky plain rather than a wasteland. Tristen stood staring at Rolan, mouth agape. Rolan grinned.
"And that's how real it is. Totally unrealistic, but... real."
The dream faded, and Rolan stood in front of Tristen's picture. Tristen's image faded almost immediately, and Rolan knew that in the real world, Tristen would be waking up.
"But my work here isn't done yet."
Looking around and finding his small pile of dust, Rolan returned to Jennifer's mirror-image. "I've got one more visit to make before I wake up."