The dream was dazzling. A bright, warm sun shone down on emerald hills and clear streams. The air was fresh and smelled of flowers. Lloyd walked along a path strewn with soft pine needles, reveling in the warmth on his skin. No anxiety, no fear. Only lightness and certainty.
The landscape was flawless. Ahead, atop a gentle hill, a white stone temple gleamed. Its walls, draped with flowering vines, reflected the sun's rays, and tall arches opened wide, as if inviting him in. A wide, well-kept road lined with fruit trees heavy with ripe, juicy fruit led to the temple.
The path was straight, safe, and generous. No obstacles, no threats. Only beauty, peace, and the promise of something great waiting for him at the end of the road.
——————
Lloyd woke with an unfamiliar feeling of warmth and optimism, which was instantly replaced by the icy cold of reality. The heavy, stale air of the basement, the smell of mold. But even through this haze, the blazing runes on the periphery of his vision pulsed steadily and persistently, and a strange confidence had settled in his chest, like a splinter.
"Bad dream?" — asked Ariel. She was sitting, leaning against the wall, and watching him. She must have woken up recently.
Lloyd sat up slowly, running a hand over his face, trying to wipe away the ghostly sensation of the sun's warmth.
"Well... how to put it..." — his voice was hoarse. — "It was... too good. Too right, I suppose?"
He looked at her, trying to explain the inexplicable. She didn't know about the scroll or what had happened to him. To her, he was just a strange travel companion.
Lloyd glanced at the yellowed, now blank, piece of paper lying nearby.
"There's... something in my head" — he began cautiously. — "I don't know how to explain it. A feeling. A sense of a route. And... a task. Bright, like a flash. If I don't do it, if I don't reach a certain place..." — He fell silent, listening to the internal pressure. — "I think I'll go insane. It's like an instinct, stronger than hunger."
"A task, you say?" — Ariel raised an eyebrow. Her interest was cold and practical. She was studying him like an unfamiliar mechanism that had suddenly started to malfunction.
"A temple on a hill. I want... need to reach it?" — Lloyd jerked his head towards the wall, as if he could see through it.
"The route... it looked so simple in my dream. Safe. Like a walk in the park." — He gave a bitter smirk. — "Ironic..."
"And you're going to go?" — she asked, though the answer was obvious. — "Follow a dream?"
"I have no choice. It's... a call. When I try to ignore it... it's like trying to stop my own heart." — He looked at her, and his eyes held not panic, but a resolve born of desperation. — "I'm going. But I'm not a fool to follow a mirage blindly. I can't survive here alone."
Ariel studied him in silence for a few seconds. Anyone else in her place would have thought him mentally unwell and called for orderlies. But there was something about him... Familiar?
Not that she could call any orderlies.
"The blind leading the blind" — she finally said. There was no mockery in her voice, just a statement of fact. — "You will listen to your call. And I will watch where we are actually stepping. But a second pair of eyes costs."
"With what?" — asked Lloyd, knowing the price was coming.
"When we return, you will help me find something in Pleraz. A record. A diary. Guide me to where I can't get to on my own."
She didn't say whose diary it was or why she needed it. Lloyd didn't ask. Her tone carried the same inevitability as his own calling.
"It seems a shared fate has bound us." — he said quietly, getting to his feet.
The internal compass pulled him towards the exit, towards that hill which, he was almost sure, didn't exist in reality. But he had to go.
"Then let's go. Let's see how your sunny route differs from ours." — Ariel stood beside him.
They emerged from the basement into the grey, joyless light of the surface. The ruins, covered in rust and strange purple mold, silently defied the idyllic landscape from Lloyd's dream. The path to the temple began here, in the very heart of the nightmare.
For the first time in a long while, Lloyd didn't feel lost. The internal compass pointed unerringly northwest, through a pile of shattered concrete and twisted metal.
"There." — he nodded forward, into the canyon of ruins. "Right through that."
"Through the thick of it. Your dream really didn't suggest a detour?" — Ariel cast an assessing glance at the proposed route.
"It suggested a perfect straight line." Lloyd replied with slight irony. — "Sunshine, singing birds. No detours."
He took the first step, and the illusion immediately began to crumble. Instead of a well-kept path, shards of glass crunched and rust flakes grated underfoot. Instead of birdsong, an obsessive, distant screeching, like the grinding of a giant's teeth.
Lloyd walked, focused on the internal sensation of the path. The compass in his head was ruthlessly precise and utterly blind to everything but the final destination.
"Straight." — Lloyd said, clambering over the overturned frame of a vehicle.
"Straight." — he repeated, ducking under a low-hanging beam ready to collapse.
It was Ariel who noticed something wrong first. She didn't say a word, just sharply grabbed Lloyd's shoulder and pulled him aside into the shadow of a ruined doorway.
"Stop. Look." — Her voice was strained.
Lloyd froze. He peered out and saw it. Three meters from them, right where they were supposed to walk, the ground was shifting slightly. Not a Drifter. Something else — like a puddle of pale, translucent slime.
It pulsated, and with each movement, sticky, tentacle-like appendages stretched out from it.
"What is that?" — Lloyd whispered, feeling a cold sweat run down his back. His compass serenely remained silent.
"Don't know." — Ariel replied just as quietly. — "But in Pleraz, in the books, I saw drawings... Sketches made by the first scouts. There were similar creatures. Labeled: 'Aggressive'."
She spoke uncertainly, relying on vague memories of others' reports.
"Are you sure?"
"No. Want to test it?"
Lloyd looked at a discarded, rusty metal rod nearby. He slowly picked it up and threw it into the center of the shifting mass.
A short hiss sounded. The rod vanished as if it had never been there, leaving behind only a puff of acrid smoke.
They stared silently at the spot, both pale.
"Cool..." — Lloyd finally exhaled. His compass had serenely been leading them right into that puddle.
"Your guide leads us like cattle to the slaughter" — she stated, and for the first time, genuine, animal fear sounded in her voice. — "It sees the goal. And only the goal."
Lloyd couldn't argue. He walked on, but now his own gaze, like Ariel's, constantly darted around, searching for threats that his inner voice stubbornly ignored. They were two blind kittens in a world full of invisible, poisonous snakes.
'Snakes... I'll definitely have to get him a souvenir.'
After an hour of walking, thirst made itself known. Lloyd bitterly remembered the streams and fruit trees from his dream.
"We need to find water." — Ariel's voice was even, but Lloyd detected the same uncertainty in it that he felt. Neither of them knew how to do it.
Lloyd stopped, closed his eyes, trying to feel the surroundings. But the compass stubbornly pulled him only forward, towards the temple.
"It... doesn't help" — he admitted with irritation. — "Only forward."
"Then... let's just go there. And see." — Ariel silently pointed to a side street.
This time, Lloyd followed her without objection. His gift was powerful but insanely limited. It led them through hell without providing any means of survival within it.
They wandered aimlessly, two ignorant souls united by shared fear and one mad hope that an answer awaited them at the end of this nightmare.
They turned into the side street, and Lloyd immediately felt something new. Not a change in direction — the compass still relentlessly pulled him back to the main route, like a stubborn dog on a leash. But now, a faint yet distinct discomfort was added to this familiar 'pull'.
It was as if a discordant note was playing somewhere in the distance, unbearable only to his hearing. He stopped, wincing.
"Something wrong?" — Ariel grew alert, her hand instinctively tightening around a piece of rebar she'd picked up along the way.
"Ah, um... Don't know" —Lloyd answered honestly, listening to the sensations. — "My... compass. It doesn't want us to go here. Not because it's off-route. But because it's... bad here?"
He couldn't explain it better. It was a vague, instinctive revulsion, woven into the very fabric of his new gift. As if the very force guiding him was warning of a danger it couldn't itself recognize.
Ariel threw a glance at the dirty asphalt underfoot, at the peeling walls of the buildings. Everything looked the same as everywhere else.
"'Bad'... is that a Drifter? A trap?"
"Worse, I think." — Lloyd whispered, and his own voice sounded strange to him. — "Something old and terrible."
He took a step back, and the phantom pressure in his mind eased. Another step — and it faded completely, replaced by the familiar, almost soothing pull towards the main goal.
They stood in silence, looking at the inconspicuous alley that was now marked with an invisible skull and crossbones for Lloyd.
"So your guide is useful for more than just suicide." — Ariel finally broke the silence.
Lloyd nodded, gulping the air free of that unseen pressure with relief. For the first time, his gift had worked for them, not against them.
"Yeah. But that doesn't make me feel any calmer" — he said, turning to leave. — "If even the thing leading me calls this place rotten... what must actually be here?"
He didn't wait for an answer. That answer, he felt, could come on its own — in the form of a whisper from the alley's darkness or the quiet scrape of a shifting shadow. And he was almost sure — they wouldn't want to see it.