The Game by Steve R. Yeager

Author:Steve R. Yeager [Yeager, Steve R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

16

REBIRTH

DANNY TREMBLE AWOKE with a start. He’d been dreaming about something that couldn’t be true—bright, multi-hued lights flashing all around him. Two mirrored balls were hanging above his head. Many women surrounded him, all wearing very little. It was hot. He was sweating. The women swayed and bounced to a heavy beat, and the lights cycled through a myriad of colors.

Even though everyone around him was packed in tight, they looked like lost souls, unconnected from each other, moving like slaves to the heavy thump of the beat. That incessant beat. It…continued. It never wanted to cease.

On and on and on it went.

But now he was awake. He knew something was wrong with his head. Everything he saw in his mind’s eye felt like a false memory, a fading dream. He was sure the images were not real. They couldn’t be real.

They were all just so…

That place with the lights, music, and women had to have been some fantastical dreamland he’d never been to. Maybe he was destined to go there someday.

Maybe it was—a prophecy?

Back in the real world, the fire in front of him crackled and popped, scattering red sparks into the air in a swirling vortex that seemed to reach to the sky. Danny followed the trail of sparks until it died out and reformed into the billions of stars that painted the night’s sky with pinpoints of light. Purple bands of color highlighted stars and a few jet-black patches, where clouds obscured the heavens, were scattered in-between. The moon was missing from the sky.

The…moon? Why was it called that?

He wasn’t sure why, but he seemed to know things. He knew the name of everything around him. But he didn’t quite understand how he knew them. He just…understood.

And that made the act of thinking about them too closely a bit too jarring for him right now.

As his gaze descended from the skies, he saw his compatriots seated around the fire with him. They’d traveled and had battled together for who knows how long?

They’d become his tribe.

Whatever obstacle they encountered, they overcame it. Whatever beast they went up against, they slew it—together. They were a solid team of mercenaries, out for gold and glory.

But that dream with the flashing lights. It bothered him to no end. It didn’t fit. It didn’t belong. It was so out of place. Perhaps it wasn’t prophecy. Maybe he’d consumed something he shouldn’t have. Maybe the barrel of wine they had drunk from had been tainted somehow. Or perhaps he’d been hexed by another Wizard. Or, he could just be having visions. And those visions were trying to tell him something…?

He shook his head to clear it. There were other things to worry about that were far more critical to his survival. The only one in the group he figured that he needed to remain wary of was Abraham. Usually, orcs couldn’t be trusted, but so far, the big green guy hadn’t utterly betrayed that trust. Not yet, anyway. Abraham was dangerous in so many ways but appeared to be no more dangerous than any other soldier of fortune.

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