finalflight | PSL; [LION'S TREMBLING ROAR]

[Sleep does not come easily to Dimitri. Many nights are spent in a shallow unconsciousness, the slightest sound enough to wake him, or the whispers of ghosts coiling around his ear, pulling him into sharp, cold cognizance. Moonlight casting across his bed as he stares at the ceiling, plagued by headaches, or what tomorrow should bring when the long, ceaseless hours of the night finally pass into dawn.

And when he does manage to sleep, his dreams of restless, terrible things. They always paired with the voices of the dead, the scent of fire choking his lungs. The taste of copper on his tongue, a sense long lost to him except in the thrall of sleep, where it presents him only with the tang of blood and bile. He feels rage and sorrow boil up and lodge in his throat, restricting his breath, and when he screams out for his father, the cry is always lost in the roar of the heat around him.

And he awakens with his legs caught in the sheets, his head thunderous behind his eyes, and spends too-long steadying his breathing until the world rights itself again.

Tonight, however, the dream is different. He can already tell it is not a reality — he believes this was referred to, once, as lucid dreaming? — because though the architecture looks like that of Garreg Mach, there is too much incorrect if he takes the time to really look. Holes in the ceiling, allowing in starlight and a swirl of bright nebulae hanging above. Hallways which wind in too many directions, staircases where they should not be, the greenhouse on the ceiling, plants drooping sadly with the lazy pull of gravity.

It’s an exciting change. A gentle reprieve, he thinks, from the usual, though perhaps he does not deserve whatever surreal jaunt he’s experiencing through his mind right now — the fire, burnt flesh, and loss were all that he deserved, all that he should ever remember when he closes his eyes, all that he should live for. Dimitri will feel guilty about this, he knows, when he awakens. But he has not yet awakened, and allows himself a small, morbid dose of self-indulgence. Exploration, curiosity, as though walking down each hallway, peering into empty classrooms, is like pulling back a layer of his mind to see what ugly shapes might lie beneath.

He reaches the Cathedral, large and cavernous and godly like it is in reality, but the ceiling has caved-in at the corner, just a massive pile of rubble reaching for the lurid nighttime sky. There is no one here, save for a dark figure with its back turned to him — an alien, almost inhuman shape to its silhouette. Dimitri reaches for his lance on instinct but finds it isn’t there. He blinks, and then it is, following the logic of a dream, and he grips it firmly in one hand as he approaches. Not aggressive, but armed enough.

A moot point in a dream, perhaps, but if he knows his mind, it is only a matter before everything turns on him, and he is lost to anger or irrational thinking, or war and blood staining his gauntlets.]

Hello?

[—he pries, voice polite but carrying across the space between them.]

no subject