//------------------------------// // Dreamscapes, or, The White Noise // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS100 I met the Spirit in my dreams, such as they were, three nights after the third cohort's extermination of the White Rose's recon battalion in the wastelands. We had taken to these nightly meetings as a way for me to keep up the Annals without leaving my house arrest to interview the participants of events. As such, the narrative was unavoidably filtered through the Spirit's rather narrow aperture upon the Company and the world beyond the Company, but it was better than nothing. "They are containing the infested shafts until the final return of the little necromancer and her cronies. And so, that covers the sections in the eastern Deep Mines. This will no doubt cause delays when the contingent of miners in transit from Mr. Tones' recruiting efforts arrive next week. Sergeant Sigil is planning out the temporary quarters for the miners in the back country between Mondovi and the Withies upstream of Trollbridge on our side of the river. The hope is that this will allow him to budget out the completion of the walls in that direction on Mr. Tones' sou, as it were." The bureaucratic tone of the Spirit in her darker aspect might have made me laugh in another mood. She was visibly nervous, her eyes jerking away from me in the direction of what I know not, staring occasionally into the grey, shifting mists, and twitching at the intermittent bursts of static and clicking noises. "One thing I wish to follow upon. The latest contingent of guards with the Mondovian voyageurs is returning by Le Coppice, and there's something wrong there. One of the guards, Deep Bluff, ceased to dream one night, ten nights ago, and I have not seen him again in the dream-stuff. Nor has Luna, nor even, well, hrm." The aspect turned inside herself, and flicked her black bat-wings blue-feathered, shifting from the Nightmare to the Princess. "It is passingly strange, once we findeth a pony within the Dream, they art always in our mind, like a sparkle in the heavens. For a star to wink out and not shine again for so long, is strange and more than strange. It most oft occurs when the pony passeth from this life into the hereafter. But all guards of the detail reported the continued existence of Deep Bluff, his participation in the duties of the caravan and the guard. We hath ordered the corporal of the guard to confront Deep Bluff and ascertain his state of mind." She shuddered, as if she was cold. "Interesting, ma'am. I thank your highness for your time, and this aid in my duties. I wish you a sweet night." "Yes, well, of course. Art not all nights sweet e'en under Tambelon's pinched heavens? Good even to you, Acolyte. Be… well." She turned, and disappeared like a trail of starlight into the tumbling mists. I looked around my dream, and sighed in recognition of her distress. You couldn't see the stars from my dream. I felt a poking sensation against my haunch. I looked down behind my dream-self, into the ground-hugging mist that hid that which I stood upon, and even my own hooves from sight. A little filly, grey-winged and huge-eyed, stared up at me. "Monsieur, you know we're all worried about you, right?" "Cherie, go find Throat-Kicker. She's no doubt worried about you." "Why? I'm in my bed where I ought to be, right next to hers. You're the one who's where he shouldn't be." And with a flap of her wings, I woke. Another night, another grey dream, another uncomfortable meeting with the Spirit. I reported to her the recoveries of our wounded and sick ponies. Sections of recruits continued to stream southwards along the Road, replacing veteran sections passing northward to the still-forming fourth cohort. Word and a warrant had arrived with the last section, reporting my outlawing in Rennet. I would no longer be able to set hoof in that province without being arrested for aggravated murder. The Spirit had her own news to report. "There is definitely a problem with the caravan guard. There are now two missing ponies, Corporal Backsword never came back to her dream to report her confrontation of the dream-absent Deep Bluff. The rest of the detail reports that they heard a confrontation, and when they arrived on scene, the Corporal was bruised, and Deep Bluff was missing. She claimed that he attacked her, and fled. They are now convinced that the missing earth pony was a changeling, or something like that, and that Deep Bluff is missing or dead. The Corporal is supposedly having them cast back on their back-track. But the Corporal isn't reporting to me." "You think the changeling killed and replaced Backsword?" "It is my concern. I worry that the body was not found. There should have been a body." "Changelings are not known in Tambelon. From what Gibblets has said in the past, and from my reading on the subject, the ambient magic shouldn't be able to support them. They would starve to death here, or be poisoned by the necromancy that lurks under every toad-stool and eave." "If it is not a changeling, what could it be?" "Tambelonian legends do talk about shapeshifters, though. Skinwalkers. A species of undead. Supposedly they torment the bison tribes of the far west. Or…" She shook out her wings, restless as I stood in the mist, thinking. "The Stump's missing partner in crime is named 'Walker'. I wonder if we're looking at an infiltration attempt? Who was that jack who knew foal-stories and legends of the legate-liches? Heavy Bucket. Can you loop him here?" "Oh, finally!" She exclaimed, and flicked her black fur blue, and shook out her feathers. "We would be most glad for a change of scenery! Here, let us carry thou to a more salubrious dreamscape!" The mist blew away in the sudden gale from her great wings, and we found ourselves in a crowded and jolly basement-bar-room, loud and half-lit. Heavy Bucket sat at a table covered in emptied mugs, and was caught with a half-full mug full of beer in mid-swallow. "Princess! Mon etoiles! This is no place for royalty!" "Concern thou not with where we ought and ought not be, my soldier of the night! We wouldst have conversation with thee. Liches! The lich known as Walker - why dost that fell thing carry that sobriquet?" "What? Who? Oh, ce mec. The side-kick of ce monstre we butchered last fall, right. Hn, I think it was because she liked to play marcheur de peau, as if she was a skin-walker. The earth-ponies and their dull sobriquets, non?" "Thank you, corporal," I said to the jack. "Congratulations on your promotion." "But of course, docteur." He nodded in acknowledgement. I turned away from him, and walked towards the stairs leading up out of the dream. "Your Highness, I do not think it a coincidence - do you concur?" The Spirit sighed in disappointment, and followed me out of the jack's loud and jolly dreamscape, and we returned to my mist. "But of course, of course. But how should we - oh!" I turned again to my Mistress. "Yes, let it infiltrate us as it intends, if it is indeed the lich. It could, I suppose, be an actual skinwalker. But the stories in the books are always of bison and the arid highlands. If they ever come down here into the humid bottomlands, I've not read of it." "The last legate to try our defenses left almost a dozen dead upon the cold earth. Should not you be more careful of our faithful soldiery?" She looked stern and disapproving of my cavalier suggestion. "We now know that the lance is bane against liches. If we can lure it into close quarters with the standard-bearer, then…" "A single blow could take the legate before it could unleash its fell sorceries against our soldiers!" She frowned again. "Tis much to lay upon the withers of young Corporal Cake." The mist swirled, and opened, briefly as if to open a window through the greyness to the starry black beyond. "Put your trust in our chosen standard-bearer, my other self," sang out the Nightmare's disembodied voice from the very stuff of the dream itself. When I turned about from the closing crack in my dream-world, I saw that the Spirit had changed her skin once again, and the Nightmare reared in celebration of her decision. "Wonderful! An ambush! I shall instruct the surviving guard to cooperate fully with the thing pretending to be Corporal Backsword, and make the arrangements." She smiled, sharp-toothed. "We are, I think, a bit peckish. A late spring meal would be delightful!" She turned to gallop away, but then turned her head back towards me. "Oh, cheer up, dedicat! Slaughter is the reason for which the Company was set loose upon the Chain! Delight in your purpose!" And she was gone. I settled upon the hidden ground, half-hiding myself in the rising mist, to await the waking day. I felt a warm presence sidle up to me, and laid itself by my side, its body-heat chasing the chill away. A snout poked up out of the grey. "You heard the Princess! It's an order from the Mistress, cheer up, monsieur! An order, an order!" And her white hoof bopped me in the nose. I awoke to find Cherie curled up beside me in my bed. The door and window were locked, and yet she had walked through my walls to pester me in my sleep. I pulled the blanket over the sleeping filly, and rose to begin my day. And pass along a message to her knight so that Throat-Kicker might know where her wayward ward had found herself this time.