Original language: French
Author: Nanoyo (Clément Rosseel)
Blood...
It was everywhere. My hands, my body, my face, even in my mouth. The metallic taste of blood that had been in my mouth too long. A dry taste that made me cough and spit out what I'd swallowed. Eyes so wide it hurt, I stared in bewilderment at the butchery surrounding me? I don't know if it was the excess of swallowed blood or the vision of massacre, whatever the reason, I failed to repress the urge to vomit. Around me lay inanimated bodies, torn limbs, gutted bellies and deformed faces... as if the lives of these men and women had literally been torn from them.
I felt alone, and I was. Among the lumps of flesh, I could make out indeniable clues that told me that my brother, my father and y best friend had died on this battlefield. And when I turned, I understood why we had fought: flames on the horizon ravaged a village, our village. My mother and my wife were probably also dead in this carnage. My legs began to run on their own, beyond common sense. It was impossible that anyone had survived!
"Not impossible... I survived, didn't I?" I thought then.
Visibly I was also injured, but I had survived. Surely stunned, I'd been lucky enough to be covered by other corpses...
My feet brought me to the embers of the village, the flames of which sounded like tiny infant screams. Like many residential houses, mine was in ruins, leaving only soot-blackened stumps. And that same bewilderment...
This is the moment when the flames of the village became nothing next to the flames of my anger. My whole being began to boil, sinking into an intense black rage. I began to scream so loud, a scream that was no longer human, that grew until it imprinted upon my flesh and skin a terrible pain, as if my body was transforming.
I didn't have time to realise that my body was no longer the same... I was no longer a simple human, I was in symbiosis with my rage.
The awaking was brutal.
Instincitively, Matthias (Salomon Last) put his hands to his face to be sure he was still the same. He was drenched in sweat, but his skin had lost the roughness of his dream. Without answering his wife Sally's (Annie Hayes) thousand worried questions, he got up and stared at the mirror. He found his green eyes, his human face, and his hands were devoid of talons... How crazy he was, to think this was something other than a dream...
"For God's sake, will you explain what's going on already?!" His wife was mad with worry, on the brink of tears.
He hugged her tenderly to reassure her and told her he'd just had a really bad dream... Nothing very important. The issue was soon forgotten, and after a cuddle, she managed to sleep again while Matthias stared at the white ceiling of the spacious bedroom in their 720ft apartment. Images glimpsed in his dream danced on the white paint. So real... For a moment he even smiled at the paradoxal situation he found himself in.
Matthias was a high-ranking marketing director for the most reputable bedding company in France. He sold sleep to millions, but couldn't find it himself. Every other night he had extremely realistic dreams that woke him up. Luckily, most of them had been calm, but tonight his neurones had come up with a blood bath. Sick of it, he decided that therapy was probably the best remedy for this kind of problem.
That was what he was thinking when he found a psychologist's business card in one of his pockets. He couldn't even remember taking it, but thought he might as well use it.
In room 307 of the Saint-Jean de Montigny Hospital, it morning visits were open and as always Clément's (Nicholas Julyan) mother was punctual. Today she's brought his grandmother, who was also worried about the poor, tortured face of her adolescent grandson... The boy had been an in-patient for two months now, hospitalised for "high nocturnal neuronal activity", which was a fancy way of saying they didn't know what it was, but they knew it was dangerous. And after seven epileptic fits and dozens of spontaneous convulsions during his sleep, Clément was beginning to agree...
But he knew something else that was forcing him to live a double life. In front of his family, friends and doctors, he feigned confusion and sadness. He was a helpless victim, that's what he had to make them believe.
But he also had to manipulate reality so that he could finish the missions he'd discovered in his other life. He knew where the abnormal activity was coming from, and the convulsions, the epilepsy... it had all started way before he'd been hospitalised. He could remember the psychologist (Stephanie Gonçalves) who had contacted him, and that revelatory session. That day, he'd come out enlightened.
It had been a year before. His brain had woken up to a world, the immensity of which he had not yet begun to perceive... The world of dream. The psychologist had accompanied him into a universe as yet unknown to him. She had explained that the real world was linked to this common dream, but that only a few awakened people were capable of consciously manipulating what happened there. More than that, she made sure he understood that all that happened in this world had an effect on the real world. If a soul realised the reality of the dream world and died there, there was a strong chance that their brain would interpret the death as being real. In the best cases, this only caused a nervous shock, or epileptic fit.
The air surrounding them was heavy with the smell of a nearby inferno. Clément looked up and down the psychologist's scaly body. Doctor Phenris was not like Clément, who had kept his human body in the dream. She had told him this form would disintegrate once he'd chosen the right side for him to fight the raging, bloodthirsty force that was the Horde.
"The Horde is a group of monsters that were originally human..." she told me as we rode towards the flaming horizon. "Werewolves, vampires, cyclopses, titans... they express the repressed violence of humanity. By definition, none of them can be awakened, but each of them is a danger to real society."
Clément wasn't dumb. He even had a tendency to hide his intelligence, and could see what she was getting at already.
"You're not human, though, are you?" he asked.
"No, I'm one of the Horde's opponents... those who do everything possible to protect the world while it sleeps. We represent control, strength, power... Strangely symbolised in what you see, a dragon.This is why we are called the Somnium Dragonis, the Dragons of Sleep."
She continued to explain in the dream. It seemed to take months. But he learned that the concept of time did not exist in these dreams, it was only linked to reality. The dream never ended, it had always existed. Only those who could control it could awaken at any time...
Clément interrupted her, asking if there were other awakened.
"In reality, there are many half-awakened people. They can awaken naturally and keep their human form, but it's rare that they do. There are also awakened people on... the other side. At least, that's the only possible reason as to how the Horde had started to become organised."
So that was why she had awakened him.
That was why he'd been chosen.
So it was time to wake up.
Doctor Phenris realised her mistake too late...
Until Matthias came along.
In the very same office where the mistake had been made, hope knocked on her door. She recognised him immediately, Matthias Delutray, one of the half-awakened people she was in charge of. But she was surprised to find him still alive and well...
She quickly convinced him to try hypnosis to see if she could take him into the dream. But as soon as she started, she noticed something was wrong. He didn't fall asleep like other patients. He dived directly into the dream, and he even remained conscious of it:
"Okay, now we're here, you can help me, right?" he said, examining his own hands. He still hadn't gotten over the vision of transformation that found him in his sleep. But he hadn't yet noticed Doctor Phenris' transformation either.
She couldn't believe it. Before her stood a naturally awakened man. Perhaps the second since the dream had existed. The first had been the original who had awakened the others... and now him. He had to be the answer, the link between the real world and the dream world. Maybe she could make up for her mistake in awakening Clément.
Clément, or he who became the only awakened in the Horde by killing all the others...
He who drove the repeated attacks and who had nearly decimated all the Somnium Draconis.
One thing was certain. Matthias would not return whole from this dream.