Forgotten Paths: The Wyrd, Ep. 1

The dream always begins the same way Warm summer air.

The smell of rich earth and corn sweat.

A warm, starchy, slightly buttery aroma of midsummer corn.

Cicadas scream from every direction until they're almost deafening, and above you stretches a sky so full of stars that it feels impossible that anyone could ever want to leave this place.

You're standing in the middle of your father's field.

The corn rises above your shoulders, swaying gently in the night breeze.

Somewhere in the distance, the cows are lowing.

It should feel like home.

But then the stars disappear as the sky is rent apart.

A wound stretches across the heavens, spilling blinding white light through the darkness.

Something enormous plummets from it, a sword so impossibly large that your mind refuses to understand its size.

It strikes the earth with enough force to flatten acres of corn in a perfect ring.

Heat washes over you.

Exploding metal screams through the night air.

A shard whistles past your arm, leaving behind a white-hot line of burning pain and melted flesh.

For just a heartbeat, silhouetted against a blinding night sky, you see figures fighting in there, winged, towering, impossibly huge.

Then everything goes still.

This time, before you wake up, the sword slowly turns.

It's not a physical movement, but a shift in perspective.

A single orb of glowing light appears on the pommel.

You know beyond reason that whatever rests within it is looking directly at you.

A voice, quiet enough to almost be mistaken for your own thoughts, speaks a single phrase.

"Not yet." And then you wake up.

You're in your cell.

It is day seven after the event, and you have been in Bureau of Discovery and Containment detention for the last week.