The Knight (Doors of the Dreamer, Chapter 3)
This is not a game
Author’s note: For the month of July I am challenging myself to write and post one chapter a day with minimal planning and outlining. You can read the first chapter of Doors of the Dreamer here.
The armored entity lifted the helmet’s visor, revealing unmistakably human eyes.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Get me out of these, then,” David said.
The knight looked down at him for a moment, then said, “Equip dagger.”
David frowned, but before he could say anything, a dagger materialized in front of the knight, who grabbed it. He knelt down and started cutting the ropes.
“I know you have questions, but we need to get off the road first.”
David was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. When his hands and feet were free, he tried to stand, but found his muscles uncooperative. The knight grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up.
“The fiend had your things.”
Fiend? David jumped down from the cart and his knees nearly gave out from the impact. A few feet away were the remains of the gray creature. It had been cleaved in two at the chest, its face still smiling, even after death. After seeing its whole body like this, even if not in one piece, David realized what the thing was. A fiend. A goblin-like monster from Doors of the Dreamer. He had killed some number of them in overworld encounters and dungeons. But seeing it here, hearing its voice, watching its black blood spill onto the pavement—it made him uneasy.
Beside its lower half was a cloth sack. Inside was David’s phone, wallet, keys, and a lonesome right-side earphone. The other must have been lost at some point during the whole ordeal. He looked down at himself. He was still wearing the same shirt and pants, though they were dirtied. His arms were covered in bruises.
The knight was already walking away, but David’s curiosity got the better of him and he circled around to the front of the cart. The decapitated beast still gripped the handles. Its head rested a few paces away and when he looked at it, David recognized the face of an ogre, another monster from Doors of the Dreamer.
“We’re inside the game, aren’t we?”
The knight looked at him, then scanned the area. His visor was down again, hiding his expression. “I’ll explain once we’re safe.”
David half-limped, half-ran to catch up with him. The highway was flanked by wide fields of brownish grass. The knight was headed in the direction of what appeared to be woods, though they were some distance off. This place did resemble the world David knew. The highway existed both here and there, although here it was unnervingly empty. But the colors were wrong, and the light and shadows were alien. Flat, somehow. He looked up and confirmed his presumption that there was no sun. The sky was a blanket of bruised purple, featureless—except, David now noticed, for a small black disc centered directly above them, almost like a dark sun.
“Here,” his new companion said.
“Huh?”
“Retrieve minor health potion.” A small vial of green liquid materialized, and the knight handed it to David. It did not surprise him to see that it looked identical to a healing tincture from Doors of the Dreamer.
“Drink the whole thing, or it won’t work. I need you in top shape.”
David raised an eyebrow at the way he said it, but uncorked the vial and did as he was told. The potion was tasteless and awkwardly thick. He held the empty vial for a moment, wondering what to do with it, before it dissolved in his hand. Similarly, his pain, bruises, and even the welt on his temple began to fade away.
“Convenient.”
The woods proved to be further away than David thought, and the potion did little to help his stamina. The knight produced a water bottle—one of a contemporary design, not something from the game—and gave it to David. By the time they reached the treeline, he had emptied the bottle and was out of breath. His companion, however, even with the burden of his armor, seemed unfazed.
“We should be safe here. Rest.”
David was already slumped against a tree. “Got any more water?”
“I have plenty of food and water for both of us. Retrieve bottled water.” He handed it to David, who tore the cap off and drank greedily.
“We’ll need to work on your endurance,” the knight said.
“Where do these come from?” David held up the bottle. “I don’t remember Doors of the Dreamer being sponsored by AquaVista.”
“This world seems inherently linked to ours. I haven’t determined the exact rules yet, but items from there appear here in places you would expect, like grocery stores. Interestingly, you can sometimes find those items as loot—” He shook his head. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Unequip all.”
The air around him shimmered for a moment and his armor vanished, revealing a thirty-something man with long brown hair and an unkempt beard.
“I’m Lance.”
“David.”
“I’m sure you have many questions, but let me say this first. This is not a game. This world has connections to Doors of the Dreamer, many of which I do not fully understand, but it we are not ‘inside the game.’ Most importantly, if you die here, you do not come back.”
Even with the helmet removed, Lance’s face betrayed no emotion. His eyes, accented by dark bags, were solemn. David drank his water and said nothing.
Lance leaned against the tree opposite him. “Now, ask me anything. I will do my best to answer.”
David didn’t even know where to start. He looked around. He had noticed before that the trees in these woods were bare, but now that he really looked, they were also dark and gnarled.
“Why is everything like this?” He gestured. “I mean—the sky, the grass, the trees…”
“I don’t know. I have not seen any natural green during my time here. Nature appears to be in a state of death or dying, but nothing ever decays. As for the sky, I unfortunately have no answers there either.”
“What about that?” David pointed to the black disc above them.
“I don’t know. It may be a celestial object, though I have never seen it move from that position.”
“How long have you been here?”
Lance remembered the exact date. When he said it, David’s jaw dropped.
“That was three years ago,” he said.
Lance pulled a smartphone from his pocket and checked it. “That confirms time passes at the same rate here.”
“How do we get back to our world?” Panic started welling up in his chest.
Lance exhaled. “That is the problem I have been working on for the last three years.”
David leaned back into the tree. His mental exhaustion hit him all at once, and he found himself fighting to stay awake. A terrible thought came to him.
“Have you been alone all this time?”
Lance shook his head. “No, there were others. However, you are the first in… one year and three months.”
“And the others?” He almost didn’t want to know.
A shadow passed over Lance’s face.
“If you don’t want to talk about it—” David started.
“They are no longer alive.”
David nodded slowly. Using a tree for support, he stood. He had finished the second bottle of water and needed to relieve himself.
“Stop.”
Lance was crouched down and looking at the highway. David followed his gaze. An armored man riding a horse was trotting down the road. No, not a man. He squinted to make out the details. The creature carried a massive scythe in one hand and a helmet in the other. The helmet was presumably its own, as it had no head.
“Dullahan,” Lance said quietly.
“What is it?”
“One of the reasons we walked so far from the highway. Monsters patrol the roads and cities.”
“Is it from the game? I don’t recognize it.”
Lance looked at him. “No. There are far worse things here.”
The dullahan stopped in front of the abandoned cart. David realized the helmet must have contained the thing’s head, as it lifted it up and used it almost as one would a lantern or flashlight to scan the surrounding area. David shot a glance at his new friend, suddenly wondering how good a dullahan’s vision was.
“Don’t worry. We are almost a mile away.”
The monster stayed there for several minutes, slowly moving its head around, before it finally kicked its horse into motion and continued down the road.