Locus Guardian, Part 1
Copyright 2011, by Arianrhod.

A pair of brothers stumble upon an ancient danger. There is a limited time before a fearsome enemy erupts forth, but our heroes have to undergo some changes first...

--- --- ---
In which the second story is begun. I wanted to wait until I had a bit more for this story as compared to the length of my Prelude chapters...unfortunately that turned into a greater delay than I first expected. I'd like to give a concrete time for the second installment of this one, but my muse is being fickle.

-Arianrhod.
--- --- ---

“Quick, get around that corner!” my brother, Samuel, shouted at me. His hope was quickly disappointed as the incoming missile nailed my avatar right in the middle of the screen.

“Aww...okay my turn!”

We were enjoying a quiet summer’s afternoon; the last before I was to go to college. Somehow it felt very bleak, as though the solid relationship that we had as two brothers was suddenly going to end in a month. It was complete bullshit, of course. My brother and I had been inseparable for years, and it was going to take a hell of a lot more than college to break that friendship.

I smiled, and abdicated my computer chair to give him a shot at the boss that was kicking both of our asses all over the place.

“I’m going to go and grab a drink, you want something?” I asked as he sat down.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks though, John,” he replied.

As I walked to the kitchen, I reflected on the slight melancholia that I was feeling. My brother was two years younger than I was, but in a way, he was the only family I had left. My mother had died giving birth to Sam, and my father was so often out of town for business that it felt like I only saw him once or twice a month.

Despite that, we’d turned out fairly well, if I said so myself. We weren’t the kind of teens that randomly got in trouble once a week, and we kept our noses out of the stupid crap that everyone always feels like trying in high school. Neither of us were particularly well-liked, but neither were we often the target of the usual assortment of bullies and socialites.

I reached down to grab a can of Pepsi out of the fridge, and a random gust blew through the kitchen, scattering papers all over the place. The kicker: none of the windows were open.

“Sam!” I bellowed. “Shut the damn window!” Our house was located on a mountainside in New Hampshire, which translates to random winds that do whatever the hell they want. Having windows open is a dangerous proposition, even on a calm day.

“I didn’t open any of the windows,” he yelled back.

“Well, prepare for a in-house thunderstorm then.”

Pepsi in hand, I stamped back to the computer, fully expecting to see Sam closing the window as I got there. Instead, however, I saw him furiously clicking and pounding on the keyboard in a fevered attempt to not get hit with a missile to the face. The window was closed.

------

Sam experienced a horrible death shortly after I got back from getting my drink, and we both gave it a few more tries before getting frustrated and moving on to other activities. There were no more freak gusts, and although I hadn’t given up wondering about it, I wasn’t too concerned.

One of the advantages about living out in the wilds is that you can go hiking whenever you want. Some people view the woods as just something to visit on a Saturday to get away from the rat race -- out here, it’s a way of life. So it was that Sam and I went out exploring that fine afternoon.

Not that there was much to be explored, mind. We’d been traipsing across “our” mountain since we could crawl. We knew its every nook and crevice, but we never got bored of meandering through the forests, marshes, and briars that made up our backyard.

Yet, something felt different. Off, somehow. It’s one of those things that is impossible to explain unless you’re also experiencing it. We hiked up and along the ridgetop, noting the differences in passing as we went. Oh, that tree got hit by lightning, looks like some wind damage over there, and so forth. Neither of us mentioned what we both felt.

We rounded a bend, and noticed that the sky was getting darker. A wind was picking up, whereas before it had been a perfectly calm, sunny day.

“Storm coming?” Sam asked.

I shook my head. “Doesn’t feel right.” I paused, smelling the air. “There isn’t enough humidity in the air for a thunderstorm. Let’s keep going.”

As we walked, the sky got uglier and uglier, and the wind continued to increase in force. Finally we reached the objective of our hike: one of our favorite vistas, about an hour away from the house. The view was shocking.

The ugly sky was localized. We could see across the mountains for several miles from the vista, and beyond our mountain, the sky was perfectly clear, and we could not see any trees moving, despite the stiff wind that was still circling around us.

“This is weird,” I shouted over the wind.

Sam had been standing there, staring at the sky. At the sound of my voice, he turned and pointed upward.

“That’s more weird,” he shouted back. Looking up, I immediately noticed that the dark cloud above us was in fact swirling. Now, I've seen tornadic activity before, and that didn't even compare to this. Literally the whole cloud mass was twisting, as if around a central axis. There still wasn’t any rain, either. It was just that damn wind and the uneasy feeling that permeated the area.

“It’s not far, you want to check it out?” he yelled at me over the tempest.

I shrugged. Even though every instinct that I had screamed to stay away, my curiosity was piqued. I had never even heard of weather like this, and I was reminded of the bizarre gust that had swept through the house seemingly from nowhere earlier today.

Onward we trudged, through the howling gale that seemed to circle endlessly. The closer to the center of the storm we got, the darker and darker it got, until we could barely see. Ahead of us was a luminescent glow, a random pinpoint of light amidst an otherwise bleak landscape.

As we broke through the swirling foliage that encircled the glade containing the light, the winds suddenly ceased. It was like being within the eye of a hurricane: deadly silent and still, with all of chaos raging around you.

Drawing closer to the light, we were able to figure out where it was coming from. A gigantic oak tree stood in the center of the glade, with a trunk easily seven or eight feet thick. The monster stretched up higher than anything else in this region of the woods. My brother and I had come across this old tree before, and while we felt that there was something special about it, we had never really spent much time in its company.

Now, though, we feared for it, as well as for ourselves. For the light that had drawn us here came from a glowing crack in the trunk. Perhaps six feet in height, the crack was only a few inches wide, but seemed to be growing. The light originated within that chasm, a solid brightness at the center, spreading outward into a soft pulse towards the extremities.

Once we had determined the source of the light and storm, we could not help but get closer to it. We were captivated, and unable to stop ourselves. Indeed, I doubt we would have if we were able...the pull of the pulse seemed almost hypnotic.

Stretching out our hands together, we reached towards the crack. Yet, in the very instant that we came into contact with the brightness at the center, it seemed as though everything stopped. The pulse, the wind, our fixation on the tree — everything ceased.

Stunned, all we could really do was look around. The signs of the wind were everywhere, so it was clear that we hadn't imagined the whole thing. The dark cloud and the shroud of bleakness underneath it evaporated, dissipating like a morning fog.

“The tree!” my brother exclaimed suddenly. Before our eyes, the crack in the trunk, although now devoid of the light which had inhabited it, simply sealed itself up. As minute passed, and the tendrils of heartwood and bark interwove and became as one; another minute and it was as though it was never there.

“Let's get out of here,” I suggested uneasily.

“Yeah...” Sam replied. “I don't know what the hell just happened, but I don't think we should stick around.”

The rest of the hike back down the mountain was relatively uneventful. As at the great oak, there were signs everywhere of the strange weather that had afflicted the otherwise quiet afternoon, but there were no more random dark clouds or cracks glowing with otherworldly light.

Everything was quiet at the house. Sam and I dispersed to our individual activities for the rest of the day. Neither of us really knew how to describe what had happened, nor how to talk about it. The only time that we even saw each other for the rest of the day was when we both emerged for supper. He was fishing something out of the fridge when I barreled through, hunting something in the pantry. Something felt off between us, and I didn't want to force the issue, so I vanished back to my room to spend some quality time with my Playstation.

Night came and went, as nights have a tendency to do. Morning saw me itching for another attempt at the boss that had cleaned both my and Sam's clocks the previous day, so I headed straight to the computer after getting some breakfast and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

Sam was already there. There was a strange intensity in his face, and he was dodging the rockets of yesterday's boss as though they were standing still. I had never seen anyone move so quickly in that game or any other. The boss was summarily defeated, but a look of irritation crossed my brother's face, and he reloaded the fight to do it again. This time he was even faster, but he still wasn't satisfied. Over and over and over again he loaded the same level, beating the living shit out of that boss until his avatar's motions became like unto a blur on the monitor.

Finally he got up, a furious look plastered across his face. “I just can't get fast enough,” he said disgustedly.

“You looked pretty fast to me,” I commented as I sat down to try my luck.

He just shook his head. “Nowhere even close. You'll understand,” he said, and stalked off towards the kitchen.

I found out very quickly that I did, in fact, understand. No matter how many tries I gave it, how easily I beat the boss, it never seemed to be fast enough. I knew that we were both well within speed-run record territory, but it didn't seem to matter. It was a compulsion to go faster...to force the electronic image that represented me to do things that it was never meant to do.

“I've been feeling this way ever since the tree yesterday,” Sam said quietly from behind me. I hadn't even heard him come back. “And not just about video games,” he continued. “Everything seems to be slow, moving lazily. It's like the world lost all sense of urgency.”

“Everything is laconic,” I supplied. He nodded dimly. “I don't know what happened yesterday. I spent all last night trying to avoid thinking about it, in fact. But it changed us. I'm absolutely certain of that now.”

Sam nodded mute assent.

“Have you felt anything else at all strange?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said, then paused. “Actually, I did have some weird dreams last night. I kept seeing this strange shape. It was like a person standing in a doorway, but all the light was behind her, so I couldn't make out any details.”

“Wait...her?” I questioned. “I had the same dream, but it was definitely a guy.”

“If that was a guy, I've never seen a girl,” he replied with a wink and a nod.

Despite his flippant answer, I was troubled. Had I just remembered it wrong? Or was something else going on?

We didn't get many chances to discuss it any further the rest of the day as some friends of mine called and offered me the opportunity to do something that did not involve laying about the house. Although hanging out was fun, I was still uneasy about the similarities but apparent differences between our dreams.

It didn't help that I still felt as though the world was moving in slow motion. My friends all said that I was acting strange, but when I pressed them for details, they wouldn't give them. All they'd say was that I seemed more irritable than usual. I neglected to mention the sudden entrance of several apparently insolvable mysteries that had entered my life and proceeded to annoy the crap out of me.

I didn't get back until almost 11pm, and was surprised to find Sam sound asleep. It was summer break — neither of us ever went to sleep before 3am unless we were sick. I was definitely worried now, but there was nothing I could really do about it except see what happened.

My sleep that night was fitful. I kept having the same dream repeatedly. In the weird dream-state that I found myself falling in and out of, I tried to pay as much attention as I could. Sometimes the figure in the doorway was male, and sometimes it was female. There didn't seem to be any reason for why the figure changed sex when it did — it would go in a streak of being male four times in a row, but then it would alternate between male and female for a bit.

Every time I strained to see any details, the dream ended. If I just let it go and ignored it, nothing would happen. The figure would still be there, watching, waiting until I got bored and gave it another try.

I awoke in the morning feeling like a zombie. I quickly bumped into my brother, who had apparently had an even worse night than I had. At least, I guessed so — he looked like shit. His face looked thinner, and his cheekbones stood out more. Dark circles had appeared under his eyes, and he walked with the shuffling gait that one adopts when very tired.

“Bad night?” I asked, and he grunted in response. “Same dream over and over?” I pressed.

A little light seemed to come back into his face, as if the mention of the dream had sparked his interest. “Did you see her?” he asked finally, slowly.

I nodded. “No details, just a female shape standing in the doorway with all the light behind her. It kept alternating between male and female, though, and I couldn't come up with any pattern that made sense.”

He sighed, with a strange sadness written all over his face. “Well I saw her, and it robbed me of any hope of sleep last night.”

“That good, eh?” I grinned.

Sam snorted, and turned back to his breakfast.

“What?” I asked. “Was she good looking? Why did you get all defensive?”

He turned away and put his dish on the counter. “You wouldn't understand,” was all he said. Then he turned and went back to his room, closing (and locking) the door behind him.

I had no idea what to say. Sure, my brother and I had fought before...he said something stupid, or I did, or — more commonly — both of us did. This time, though, there wasn't even really a fight. It was more of a dismissal. Like he'd seen something that I wasn't worthy of being included in.

The days passed, and life continued this peculiar cycle. Sam and I seldom bumped into each other, but every time I saw him, he looked worse and worse. He was obviously losing weight, and his hair was disheveled. At the same time, there was a strange light in his eyes...an almost reverent, exultant light. The few times I managed to get him to talk, he said that he never saw the male figure anymore. The female in the doorway was the sole visitor of his nightmares.

The opposite seemed to be happening to me. After the first few nights, I never saw the woman anymore. It was only ever the backlit man. I thought several times that I was getting closer to seeing details, but it never quite came together. While Sam seemed constantly ill, probably more as a result of his lack of sleep than anything else, I had never felt better in my life. I barely got any sound sleep at all, but I seemingly had moved beyond the need for sleep. I could — and did — stay up till all hours of the morning, doing whatever I saw fit, with no ill effects the next morning.

Dimly, a part of me realized that something was amiss. I was so busy feeling awesome that I stifled it, though. At least, until a misty morning approximately two weeks after the strange storm, when my brother stumbled out of his room with a look of wonder on his face.

“What's got you so happy this morning?” I asked sourly. I've never liked mists. They're cold and wet without really being wet, and they're an all around miserable experience.

“I'm finally on to the next stage,” he said, as if all was right with the world. He waved his hand in front of his face, and a look of such utter happiness came over his face that I found myself smiling as well. “It's not slow anymore,” he grinned.

With a start, I realized that he was right. The peculiarly lazy state that we'd both felt the world to be in since the freak incident was gone. I'd learned to put it out of my mind and ignore it, but as soon as Sam pointed it out, I immediately saw that everything was back to normal. I no longer felt like the world was moving too slowly.

"What did you mean, 'the next stage'?" I asked.

"Oh...this and that," he said evasively, as if realizing that he shouldn't have said something.

I sighed. "Sam, you know you can't keep secrets from me. We've been down this road before." I was referring, of course, to when he limped home one day with bumps and bruises all over, and a black eye to boot. He refused to tell me what was going on, but I eventually got it out of him. Being an older brother has some advantages, after all. Let's just say that there were some very contrite bullies on the way home the next day.

"This is different," he replied calmly. "When you're ready to know, you'll be told. Titania has assured me of this." With that, he turned and strode from the room, and refused to acknowledge my calls after him.

"Titania, huh?" I said to myself once he'd gone. Some research on the Internet later, and I was delving furiously into the realm of Celtic mythology. "Faerie queen, sure, whatever," I said quietly once I was done.

To say I was disturbed would be an understatement. Sam had never been the bookish sort, and I couldn't think for the life of me where he would hear the name Titania, if not a book. The notion occurred to me that maybe she was the woman in his dreams, but I immediately dismissed it. That would mean that a large number of core truths upon which our world was built were, in fact, very much false. I wasn't ready for that concept.

At least, I wasn't until that night. My sleep progressed calmly enough at first, but quickly turned dark and stormy. Soon I stood facing that accursed door again, with the imposing shadowy male figure obscuring whatever lay beyond.

That night, however, he moved. For the first time ever, he did something other than just watch me. At first, I thought that it was merely a twitch, of little or no notice. But then that twitch became a turning, and that turning became a full movement. Before I knew it, the doorway was standing open, and the light was shining full in my face.

I wasn't sure if I should go through it or not. I had been waiting for over two weeks for this dream to do something different, but now that it had, I found myself scared of it.

The fabric of the dreamscape warped, as if in response to my hesitation, and suddenly Sam was standing beside me.

He smiled, and said, "It's alright, John. We'll go through together." His voice seemed weird somehow, like if it was overlaid with another person's. The peculiar harmony that this yielded confused me for a moment, but I shrugged and began walking towards the doorway. It was just a dream, after all.

We stepped through and stood before a giant waterfall whose source stretched past the point where I could see. Lush foliage surrounded the pool at its base, and the encircling forest was all-encompassing. It was also, I noted dimly, every season at once. I could see new spring growth, slumbering winter nakedness, brilliant fall color, and vivacious summer regalia all simultaneously in the region beyond the doorway.

Two beings emerged from the shadows on either side of the pond. I couldn't have described them any differently. They bore the slightest resemblance to traditional faeries, but appeared dramatically more regal and dignified. One was male, and the other, female.

The female quickly rushed to Sam's side, and embraced him. I just kind of stood there in shock. This was still a dream, right? I briefly toyed with pinching myself, and then decided that if it was a dream, I didn't want to wake up just yet.

The male and I ended up standing there, staring at each other. I was faintly aware that Sam and the girl were talking off to the side, but my attention was fixed on the figure that stood before me.

He had shoulder-length silver hair, which contrasted gently with his pale skin. He had gracefully pointed ears, and sported a better physique than I could ever manage to attain. Upon closer inspection, I realized with a start that he had several appendages that were not part of the standard manlike package. A strange, almost rocklike coating covered most of his joints, especially his knuckles, elbows, and knees. And then there was the matter of his eye color. Last I checked, blood red pupils weren't exactly natural.

I noted offhand that getting punched by this guy would really leave a mark, and decided that pissing him off would not be a good idea. The being just kept staring at me, so I continued my examination.

A faint shimmer in the air above his hands caught my interest. Upon looking at it closer -- without actually drawing any nearer -- I saw a slight aura surrounding his body, as if from a fire.

"Oh, do calm down, Oberon," a light, lilting voice called from the other side of the pool. I turned to find the woman addressing me. "Please forgive him, John. He is as uneasy about meeting you for the first time as you are of him."

Now that I was being talked to by her, I gave the female being a good look. I hadn't realized that I was so focused on the male -- Oberon, apparently -- that I had ended up overlooking her. Under any other circumstance, I doubt it would be possible to overlook her.

She was incredibly beautiful, in an otherworldly kind of way. The pale complexion that she shared with Oberon was more like ivory on her, and her silver hair seemed to have its own luminescent glow in the soft light of the twilit waterfall. That hair cascaded down her back, sweeping around four gossamer wings that seemed a combination of a butterfly and a dragonfly, eventually coming to rest in the small of her back. Her arms and legs were adorned with various finny appendages of a soft teal color, which were greatly set off by the black dress that she wore. Her eyes, unlike Oberon's, were a sharp ice blue -- a little unusual, perhaps, but not outside of normal deviations. She had a medium sized bosom, which complimented her frame rather than dominate it. While next to Oberon she would surely seem diminutive, I could tell that she was hardly a weakling.

Tearing my eyes away from my examination of her, I replied, "I take it this isn't your first meeting with Sam?"

She tilted her head to one side, and laughed. "This is at least our tenth," she answered softly. "My brother has been more...reticent, let's say."

Oberon and I resumed our stare-off. "Well," I said finally, "what's the point of all of this?"

"You were there at the site of the corruption," Oberon said, as if that explained everything. His voice was a deep, rumbling bass. Somehow this did not surprise me.

"You mean the light that was coming out of the trunk of that old oak tree?"

He simply nodded.

I turned to Titania, hoping that she would be more willing to give up information. Unfortunately, her and Sam were at the far side of the glade now, and were lost in their own conversation. Whatever they were discussing was apparently quite funny, as they were both laughing hysterically.

Dammit.

"You'd better start at the beginning," I told Oberon. "And I mean the beginning. What was that light and why are my brother and I having these dreams?"

Oberon continued to stare at me.

"Oberon, just tell him," Titania's voice rang over the roar the waterfall. "You might find that you actually like him."

He scowled, but started talking. "My sister and I were once guardians of the loci of your world."

"What's a loci?" I interrupted.

Oberon sighed before continuing. "You really don't know anything, do you?" he asked. At my attempted response, he held up a hand. "Rhetorical. And don't interrupt me again. A locus is a point of convergence, where many leylines join together. Think of it like a train station. The power that travels along the leylines is constantly changing directions at loci."

He paused to scowl at his sister again. "I really wish that she wasn't right about this," he said mournfully. "Anyway. As I was saying, we were once guardians of loci, such as the one underneath the old oak tree that you and your brother stumbled across."

Again he stopped, as if to figure out how to continue his explanation. "You're not very good at this talking thing, are you?" I asked.

The bleak look on his face somehow managed to grow even darker. I backed up a bit, and said cautiously, "I mean that in the best possible way, of course."

Oberon apparently didn't believe me, because the next thing I knew, he had charged me and I was laying on my back against the soft loam of the glade.

His fist was positioned immediately above my face.

"Oberon!" Sam and Titania both shouted from the other side of the pool, but I knew it wouldn't matter. I was going to die here.

For a moment, I really believed that Oberon was going to smash my skull into little bits. Instead, though, he opened his fist, and struck my forehead with his open hand.

"Learn!" he shouted, and the dreamscape disappeared.

------

The world was light. I was viewing the Earth as if from orbit, and it was light. More appropriate, I guess I could say that I saw lines of light. They criss-crossed the planet in a web more intricate than any human weaver could ever reproduce. There were millions of strands, and billions of connecting junctures.

"Loci," Oberon's voice whispered.

"And the strings that form the loci are...leylines?" I asked dubiously.

"Indeed," he replied quietly. "Now, this is what happens when the corruption seeps in."

One of the loci in New Hampshire began to pulse with an ugly greenish purple hue. Soon that unhealthy color spread along the leylines that emanated from that locus, infecting more nearby loci, which then spread the disease even further.

"This is bad, right?" I asked uneasily.

"Look closer," came the ghostly response.

The image of the planet before me zoomed in suddenly, and I found myself flying several hundred feet off the ground. More specifically, I was over a small town not far from my house. The soil was a hideous red, as if it were soaked with blood and worse. Things I cannot even begin to describe crawled, slithered, and shambled across streets, what used to be streets. Some of them were still feasting on the humans who had lived there, and slimy bits of entrails dangled from their gaping, drooling maws.

"This is what we prevent," Oberon muttered, and the world went black.

------

I awoke the next morning to a sweat-drenched bed. Whether or not I ascribed any meaning to the dreamstate that I had experienced the previous night, I could not deny that, even as just a dream with no further meaning, it had been a hell of a ride.

I shambled somewhat listlessly out to the kitchen, and was surprised to see Sam already there. At least, I thought it was Sam...he seemed a little shorter than I was used to.

Whatever. He turned and greeted me with a way-too-cheery smile, and then returned to mixing up pancakes.

"Did Oberon explain everything to you last night?" he asked over his shoulder.

I started, then remembered the flight sequence and dry-heaved.

"I'll take that as a yes," he chuckled.

"You mean we actually shared that dream?" I asked incredulously.

He nodded. "Apparently, we've been sharing them all along. Just, my doorway is on the other side of the pond than yours, so to speak." He seemed to want to say more, but stopped, and resumed stirring the batter.

I shrugged and let it go. "So, what, they want our help with stopping this corruption or something?"

"Oberon didn't cover that?" Sam questioned.

"Negative."

"Well, that's balls. Alright, near as I understand it, they're stuck there. They used to be part of this world, but they can't get here anymore, and these corrupted nodes are breaking out all over the place."

The ominous sizzling of the pancakes on the frying pan added whole volumes of meaning to my brother's explanation, and my stomach growled appreciatively.

"The way Titania explained it to me, there's something coming. Some time when the world changes, and magic returns, or something like that. Anyway, when this shift occurs, the sudden flare-up all over the world is going to very nearly overload the leylines, which in turn will leave the loci vulnerable. Pancake?"

I held out my plate, and grinned.

"Charming," Sam murmured, and loaded me up. "Apparently, there's been forces trying to break into our world from beyond for millenia, and the leylines and loci have acted like a barrier to keep them out. For the previous cycles, Oberon and Titania, or at least versions of them, have been present to keep the system running."

"So, essentially," I tried talking with my mouth full of pancake, and only marginally succeeded, so I paused to swallow. "What you're telling me is that they want us to help on this side of things and keep everything smooth."

"That's what I've been told, yeah."

"My super-secret brother sense is telling me that you are leaving something out."

"Would I do that?" he replied with a vacuous look.

I groaned, and stretched back with a full stomach. "Yes, you would, wouldn't you? Alright, so what do we do?"

"You mean you believe it?" he said, obviously surprised.

"Well, we've never been able to explain the whole afternoon with the storm and the tree, we've apparently been sharing dreams for the past two weeks, and frankly, you've been looking rather unwell these last weeks. I'm betting that it's because of something that you were exposed to that afternoon, and whatever it is, isn't natural."

He smiled faintly. "Oh, I'm quite well. At least, physically. Mentally, I'm not sure...I'll probably be quite mad by the end of this, but then, life was starting to bore me anyway."

At my look, he quickly tried to cover his tracks, telling me that everything was fine, and not to worry, and meaningless gestures like that. I pretended to buy it, but I really didn't. He'd let something slip there that he hadn't intended to, and it worried me. I resolved to have a little chat with Oberon tonight, assuming that the dream held true to its past pattern and came yet again that night.

In the mean time, there was nothing I could do. My only veritable source of information was a dream, and was subject to whatever ruled the dreamscape.

And so, as soon as it grew dark, I headed to bed. I think my brother was worried about me, since my habitual bed time over break was somewhere after any sane person and before time for brunch. I just feigned feeling tired, and packed it in.

As expected, the dreamscape opened to me that night, and soon I was standing before Oberon. Titania, I noticed, was not present. And also as expected, Oberon was merely standing there passively, waiting for me to say something.

We stood off for a little while until I lost my cool and charged him. Probably not the greatest idea that I’d ever had, but I was growing desperate. Oberon’s reaction was easily predictable: I ended up on the ground in pain seconds later.

“You bastard!” I spat. “What are you doing to my brother?”

Oberon, to his credit, actually managed to look surprised. “I’m not doing anything to him. I thought you had a better understanding of what’s happening here than this.” He sounded faintly disappointed, and that enraged me all the more.

I charged him again, but this time his reaction was different. I still ended up on the ground, but I was not in anywhere near as much pain. It was as if he was trying to diffuse me...to let me get out all of my frustration and rage without hurting me.

And of course, that only made me all the more furious. It was like he wasn’t even giving me any credit at all -- never mind the fact that I didn’t really deserve any.

I don’t know how long I strove against him. I suppose it really doesn’t matter in the long run, since as everyone has experienced, time is fluid in a dreamstate. It felt like hours, and I could barely move at the end of it. But at least it felt as though I had achieved something. Oberon was looking at me with new respect in his eyes, and I felt a lot more at peace.

As I lay there on the ground, defeated, Oberon moved towards me, quietly and slowly. He sat down on a nearby stump, which had not been there before. Even as out of it as I was, I couldn’t help but wonder at his mastery of the dreamstate.

“I’m going to tell you a story, John,” he said almost wearily. “A long time ago, a thousand years or more, the last Time was upon us. My sister and I were simple village children, analogous in a way to you and your brother. Our local lord was a kindly old gentleman with no heir, so we did not have to fear for random wars at a whim, and chance conscriptions. Our parents were farmers, and while I would not say that we were well off, there was always enough to eat, and a goodly amount laid aside for darker times.

“Well, those darker times came. We were not chosen beforehand, as my sister and I are attempting to do now. The land was nearly overrun with a sinister darkness erupting from the loci all across Europe. Eventually, after several years of rampant chaos, my sister and I began to experience concurrent, shared dreams. You can guess what happened thereafter.

“Suffice to say that after a bloody struggle, the invaders were driven back to the nether realm from whence they came, and my sister and I assumed the role of guarding the loci. After centuries of vigilance, our powers waned, and we subsided into this dreamstate realm, awaiting the approach of the Time of Renewal, when the loci will surge with new power and be vulnerable once again.”

He stopped, and resumed his normal stoic position.

“So, what you’re saying, is that you are in a line of guardians? I thought that you two were these legendary king and queen of a fairy realm?” I prompted.

“Shakespeare was a hack. A good hack, I’ll grant him that -- but a hack. The shape of the dream is warped by the perceptions of those who enter it. Oberon and Titania were largely creations of Shakespeare. The original beings who served their responsibilities were named differently, and existed many thousands of years ago...many cycles ago. Your contemporary mind cannot accept the raw power of such beings, and so, we couch ourselves in these generalities. In the dreamstate, with you as the dreamer, they become true. I can no more call my sister by her truename than I could parade around singing and dancing like a fool. This is law.”

I mulled that over a bit, watching the shifting dream as it fluctuated around the two of us. On a whim, I tried to imagine within the dream. What if the sky were yellow, I idly wondered.

Oberon gasped, stirred out of his reverie. He turned to me with a pained look. “Some things are the way they are for a reason. By changing the sky to yellow, you have altered more than you can conceivably understand. Change it back before we both die, please.”

I obliged, and grinned at him. “I’m getting the hang of this dream thing. Unfortunately, you’re right. I have no frame of reference, so I can’t free you from that form. I’m sorry.”

Oberon shrugged. “I always knew that it would be something like this. I’m thankful that I ended up this way, in all honesty, and not some fop like Peter Pan. You’d shudder if you knew the story behind that one,” he grinned back.

Despite myself, I found that I was beginning to like Oberon. He was hard to get to know, and his undyingly stoic and regal nature was offputting, but he had a very, very dry sense of humor.

“Where is Titania at, anyway?”

“Her dreamer has not yet given her form,” came the answer. “She is here, though, and wishes you well.”

“So, you mean that Sam hasn’t gone to bed yet, basically?”

Oberon nodded the affirmative.

In a sharp insight, I suddenly found that I knew what was wrong with my brother.

“Oberon,” I said, just loudly enough to get his attention.

“Hmm?” he rumbled.

“Sam isn’t going to be my brother for much longer, is he?”

Oberon merely shook his head.

“Was it...was that the way it was with you, too?”

“It was,” he said softly. “The previous guardians needed a pair of siblings, and they needed ones who had sufficient aptitudes in certain...categories. Gender...was not one of them.”

“I see,” I replied, and we went back to staring at the dream surrounding us.

------

I carefully avoided my brother the next day. Shortly after my conversation with Oberon, I had fell into a dreamless, quiet sleep. I still had questions for Oberon, though, and I did not want to worry Sam with what I knew, and what I was concerned about.

In the mean time, I had my own preparations to make. For some reason, I had woken up with an incredible urge to work out. I’d never really been much of a muscle man, although I dabbled in it on and off. The fact that college began in just under three weeks seemed highly unimportant. I wasn’t packed at all, but neither did I feel any inclination to begin doing so. It was as if college was never going to happen. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

After working out for the majority of the morning, I picked up another old hobby of mine in the afternoon. I quietly stealthed down to the garage, to avoid waking Sam, and found a likely looking block of wood. I grabbed a knife, and went off into the woods a ways to sit and be alone with my thoughts, my dreams, and the block of wood on which I would make them reality.

Carving is an interesting hobby. You never know what you’re going to end up with when you’re done. I suppose it’s a bit like sculpting in that way. After a long afternoon and evening session, I ended up with a curious thing that looked like it was trying to be a Celtic knot, but failing miserably with the whole two-dimensions idea. I briefly considered that it should have been impossible for someone with my limited skillset to carve something that advanced, let alone in eight or nine hours, but I shrugged it off.

I’d kind of been dulled to the impossible lately.

I returned home, proudly toting my new...thing. There weren’t any lights on, which worried me. I slowed down and tried to move as quietly as possible, so as to avoid alerting any intruders. Sam should’ve been up by now, and the lack of light coupled with a raging instinct was warning me of danger.

I silently opened the door into the house from the garage, and listened. Only the sounds of silence greeted me. I decided to call for my brother, figuring that the immediate area was secure, and there was a limited space from which an intruder could attack me.

“I’m alright,” Sam’s voice called from upstairs.

“Why aren’t there any lights on?” I yelled back, still not trusting this.

“Because I didn’t feel like it,” he replied. “Don’t worry, there’s nobody else here.”

My instincts had subsided a bit, but I was still worrying. I poked around a bit downstairs, then shrugged and went up to show my brother the weird carving that I’d made.

I was not ready for what I found waiting for me.