Nightmare Dearest

“You are hereby sentenced to death.”

King Auric heard the words delivered succinctly from his mouth, but gave them no further recognition. He had long since forgotten the weight of his commands, desensitized by their vast quantities; no longer did it faze him to take a life for any reason, so long as it was “justified.”

“Take him away.” No longer could he be bothered to attend the beheadings, much less execute the criminals himself—though his ability to do so would be a simple task through use of royal magic. Without another word, he turned away from the man whose life he had just proclaimed forfeit, sparing not even a moment to glance upon the man’s pleading face. After all, mercy was not something he could offer to alleged murderers. A few people in the crowd jeered, but most simply accepted Auric’s decision as final, like dutiful citizens. He had weighed all the evidence (or lack thereof) that he could, and made the wisest decision. The good of the many outweighed the good of the few, and it was his job to act upon this rule. His citizens could never know what that was like.

Exhausted from the day’s endeavors, Auric returned to his chambers, allowing only for minimal disturbances from his various advisors. He was in no mood to be pampered for bed, so he sent his servants away prematurely, giving them only time to remove his royal accentuations—from gold-jeweled crown and robe to symbolic facial piercings and swirling eyeshadow. Above all, they served to emblazon his aurulent eyes and enhance his magical energy. Now unveiled, he examined his reflection in the mirror. The King of Auresium was no more. He peered now into the eyes of young Auric. Not King Auric, nor even Prince Auric. Just Auric, of tawny skin and lengthy ebony hair (a few locks of which remained neatly braided from the work of his handmaidens). That face belonged solely to the young boy he had long since forgotten how to be. How lonely it was being King.

~*~

Auric’s eyes stirred unsoundly under the covers of his eyelids. That nightmare again. He stood as King Auric in the center of his subjects, a crowd of people expanding the entirety of Auresium’s city streets. He wished to cry out to faces he recognized, but he knew not a single name. He rested his hand on the shoulder of a man his age, mid-forties or less, but the man gasped in terror and retreated back into the protection of the throng, its boundaries withdrawing from Auric’s kingly countenance.

Normally, he would have awoken before the nightmare continued; only this time, he spotted a spark of hope that kept him under: an old crippled woman, pleading for recognition with outstretched hands in a manner of desperation similar to his own. His subjects avoided her, too; only a bubble of horrified screams surrounded her. Her back was to him, so he shouted to get her attention. When she turned, Auric was taken aback by her hideous appearance. Hesitant as he was, he was intrigued to learn more about her and the similarities they shared. If he was not hideous in appearance, was he hideous in some other way? Perhaps she held the answers he sought.

While they spoke, the crowd seemed to melt away entirely, as did the woman’s unsightly persona. As time flowed onward, she became younger and more beautiful, until she was his entirety. For the rest of his nightmare-no-more, only two truths existed: Auric and Daphne.

Auric awoke with the aching realization that he may never see young Daphne again. She had been a figment of his imagination, and nothing more. For days, he brooded over her absence, unable to summon her to his dreamscape again.

Nevertheless, his meeting with her in a clarity uncharacteristic of dreams had opened his eyes to those in the waking world: his subjects. Within the coming winter months of hardship, he used his magic to restore their crops and lessen their labors. He spared countless families by lifting several of his needlessly strict laws, many of which had been punishable by hefty fines or even death. The man of months past would never have considered these actions.

However, good fortune for Auresium’s subjects was short-lived. Not even the most powerful magic could prevent the sky from ripping open, nor creatures foul-imagined from pouring out of its depths. King Auric saw it happen with his own eyes as he stood on his chamber balcony, looking out over his city. These beings never before seen swarmed all of Auresium in numbers easily equivalent to the city’s sum of nearly one million souls. They resembled anything from spiders and snakes to centaurs and drakes. No two creatures looked the same, though they shared many of the same grotesque characteristics—leathery wings, tattered and torn, serrated tooth and claw, extra pairs of limbs or eyes. Large mouths with seeping, flesh-eating slime. Disfigured bodies, rotted or wilting. Above all, they shared the ability to strike profound and crippling terror in Auresium’s people, and to swiftly or painfully take their lives while doing so.

To King Auric’s dismay, havoc festered and spread exponentially. He watched helplessly as the demons of all shapes and sorts plagued his people. Some leaped upon their victims to devour them immediately, often dismembering the head or limbs first. Others sprayed them in flesh-eating acid or even fire and prodded them tenaciously until the screaming ceased. Auric turned away from the sight and vomited, but the sounds of shrieking remained to ingrain each image into his mind for eternity. The connection he’d attained with his people wretched and writhed within him as he felt their lives slipping away by the thousands. He had to do something now, but there was no time to think.

“Auric.” The voice from behind him, light and honeyed, caused him to turn and gape.

“Daphne…?” His mouth became a broken floodgate. “If you’re here, then I’m dreaming, right? This is a mere nightmare. Then why must it feel so real?” He placed his hand over his gut, where it convulsed with pain. He could not shut out the screams of his people in the background, and could have sworn he had heard his name. He shut his eyes instead.

“Because it is real.” Daphne walked up to him and lifted his chin, short though she was. He opened his amber eyes and stared down into hers, a deep, inviting violet. “I have missed you, Auric. You have no idea what it was like to see you return to me each night with memory only of our first meeting. By morning, you had forgotten me. Now, I have come to you in your waking world, for never again shall we part.”

“You… what?” Auric felt more like the King’s fool now, speechless as he was.

In answer, Daphne grasped his jaw with frightening strength and forced him to look back upon the slaughter of his people. “Isn’t it beautiful?” She smiled sweetly.

Auric’s eyes widened in realization. “You monster… You did this?” He shoved away her hand as soon as she released her grip and pivoted back to glare her in the eyes, his fists clenched and shaking.

“Did what?” she asked, confused. “We’re together now, nothing else matters. Recall our first meeting? There was naught in the world then but us.” Her words fell upon deaf ears. How could she be confused? Was she truly unable to comprehend the weight of her actions?

“You’re one of them,” Auric bristled. For the last time, he looked upon her, and all he felt was ill. “I do love you, but I cannot condone this. You are hereby banished from my city, as are your demons.”

Daphne cackled, her true nature unraveling now that her guise had been broken. “Impossible, mortal. You haven’t the power.”

“My life is power enough.”

Before Daphne could stop him, she was repelled outward by an invisible force, launching her clear off the balcony. “Fool, you’ll die!” she shouted, but to no avail. He had shown her love as no one else had, and she felt that now in the wetness on her face.

Auric was using his own life energy to create a force field around the entire city. Slowly, but surely, it expanded outward, propelling the nightmarish demons from their victims and casting them out. Only the strongest nightmares were able to survive the force of the blow, with the majority of the foul beasts disintegrating on contact.

Suddenly freed from the waking nightmare just as swiftly as it had begun, Auresium’s people reveled in the realization that their own king had sacrificed his life for theirs. In his place was a glowing gold spire fit to be the new center of their city. Regaining themselves, they began to sing: both in sorrow for the sacrificed and gratitude for the salvation of what remained.

Beyond the field, which had finally stopped expanding just past the city’s end, lay Daphne and her grotesque minions, groveling in defeat. They had their lives, but Daphne saw only loss. “You brought me into existence, only to snuff yourself from it… And for whom? The lives of these lowly peasants? How dare you pick them over me?!” she seethed. Her beauty melted from her figure with each word she spoke, until mere bone and tattered flesh remained. One of her eyes had fallen out, leaving a black socket, gaping and lifeless; the remaining eye contorted into a shadowy violet pit of wrath, unforgiving. Her voice became a shuddering rasp. “Very well, Auric. I swear on my eternal life that Hell shall thrive on this Earth and the humans you so foolishly saved, until they know little more than one thousand sleepless nights.” From then on, Auresium was never the same. Although still protected by Auric’s Field, the city suffered a breach every now and again from particularly strong nightmares, of which would feast upon whichever unfortunate civilian had dreamt up their existence. Despite these minor atrocities of few and far between, Auric’s city of gold is still protected to this day, and could never have thrived—nor survived—without his sacrifice.