The Substantiality of Dreams, ch. 3 continuation

    The feeling of self-awareness that flooded Derrick’s conscious mind at that instant was nearly overwhelming, as was the heavy nausea that struck him like a fist in the stomach at the same time.  For a brief moment, all except for those sensations was engulfed in blackness, and with the darkness, a vague fear.  He staggered slightly as he became aware once more of his own sight, hearing, and other senses, relief washing over him like a cleansing wave.  After blinking and shaking his head woozily to clear his stupor, the boy looked up to see a face that he knew he recognized.  Yet, instead of memories, all that he could call to mind was a dull ache, until ideas and images returned one by one to his recollection; first a figure, then the face… a sword—his sword.  The gift!  …And a name.

    “Lanther!”

    “You recovered quickly for having wandered so far from yourself as you did.  I am impressed.”

    That voice… that wasn’t right…

    Derrick’s eyes focused further, allowing him to see a second man who looked much older than Lanther, with strikingly jade-green eyes that shone wisely from beneath his graying locks as they scrutinized him.  Derrick felt those eyes staring straight into his very soul, but, before he could shudder at the feeling, Lanther’s voice drew his attention away.

    “Yes, dear boy, it is I.  Though your mind was absent from your body, your feet seem to have remembered the way; since here you are.”

    Derrick gave him a confused look for half an instant before turning his gaze on his surroundings, and he gawked.  It was all he could gather the wit to do.

    Rough-barked trees towered tall and almost lordly all about him, and among them, going to or fro between many different huts, chopping wood, practicing fighting off to the side, or simply standing around and chatting, were numerous men and boys of varying ages, all clad in loose-fitting garments of a tan, dun brown, or olive drab color.  To the right, the scene was bordered by a cliff that rose up above the forest floor, crested by a grove of ash trees.  All Derrick could think was that he was a long ways away from where he’d closed his eyes, and so he scarcely comprehended the hand that was stretched out to him in welcome or the words that accompanied it.

    “Welcome, Derrick Dragonflare, to Ashridge.”

    “Yes, welcome.  A most fortuitous arrival yours is as well.”

    “Ah, indeed it is; we were just speaking of you.” a third man agreed, also extending a hand.  Derrick took the hand almost listlessly, but the friendliness and confidence of the man’s grip seemed to flow into him, and he tightened his own mid-shake.  The man smiled a wide, toothy, genuine smile that curved the corners of his bushy, white mustache and beard upward in a cherubic grin.

    “But come now.  You look quite confuzzled, my boy!  Little has been explained to you, it seems.”

    The corners of Derrick’s mouth turned upward against his will.  That man’s smile was infectious… or perhaps it was only his odd choice of words.  His elfish features and the way his face seemed to be edged in cotton-ball snow like what one would see glued to a kindergarten art project made Derrick think of a short, skinny Santa Clause; if Santa ever wore a sword, that is.  But he went on, breaking the boy from his musing thoughts.

    “My name is Clerique.  I am the instructor of archaic sciences here at Ashridge.  Yours is Derrick, yes?”

    Derrick answered with a nod, feeling a bit out of place, and still quite disoriented from his wandering of mind and body.

    “Right then!  I am most excited to get the chance to speak with you.  You see, I have read a great deal on the matter, and it’s been so very long since I was last able to…”

    “Clerique, if you’re going to talk his ear off, at least stay on topic to do so.” Lanther interrupted, sparing Derrick—so the boy hoped—from a rather awkward conversation, “We still have much to discuss, though… matters that are not yet for his ears.”

    “Indeed.” The green-eyed man agreed, “Clerique, please show him around, and explain to him how things work here.”

    Derrick gave Lanther an uncertain look, wondering if Santa-man was harmful-crazy or just a little senile.  Realizing that the man in question was no longer in his peripheral vision, Derrick turned around to see him walking away, babbling about something nonsensical in a friendly fashion as though he were right there listening to him.

    He decided on senile; which eased his nerves slightly.

    “Go on, lad,” Lanther encouraged with a strange smile, “You’d best catch up to him, he’s a bit off in the head,”—“too much time alone with his books,” one of the other men muttered—“So he’s not likely to realize that you’re not with him.”

    Unsure of how else to reply, Derrick nodded and gave a crisp ‘Yes sir,’ before jogging after the old man.  Catching up, he found Clerique to have seated himself upon the stump of a tree as he gave what appeared to be a lecture to a class of invisible students.

    “…Now, after Dimitrius had captured the fort in the Battle of St. Lulnarez, his power in the senate rose to an all-time high, making it difficult for his political adversaries to—Ah!  Derrick!  So good of you to join us!”

    He beckoned with his hand to Derrick as he stood rather awkwardly some feet away, “Come here, then.  I’ve much to teach.”

    The boy wondered briefly if he should worry about trodding upon the other “students’” toes, but decided that Clerique couldn’t be that crazy, and simply walked straight up to him.

    “Wonderful!” the man cried, before muttering to himself, “Now… where was I…”

    “I believe the adversaries of Dimitrius were just having difficulty doing something.” Derrick said.

    “No, no, no.  That wasn’t it at all!”

    Derrick just stared at him with as close to a passive expression as he could muster.  He was going to learn a lesson in tolerance today, it seemed.  Absently, he wondered if tolerance qualified as an ‘archaic art’.

    “Ah! Yes!  I was going to give you a tour!  Come, lad, let’s get on with this.”

    As Derrick followed, he remembered reading about a type of insanity that was something like this.  What was it called?  Alzheimer’s?  Schizophrenia?  …Whatever.  It didn’t matter at the moment.

    It occurred to Derrick, as Clerique babbled happily about history and kings and such, that they were walking away from the place that he was fairly certain he was supposed to be touring, but he figured with a sigh that telling that to his guide would be quite fruitless.  Something the man said caught his attention, however, and his ears fairly perked up with sudden interest.

    “…Wizards and wizardly things.  Now, they didn’t cast spells, mind you; at least not any of them worth respecting.  The casting of a spell, you see, is the act of calling upon a demon to do your dirty work.  A most nasty business indeed, and no mistake.

    “Now it wasn’t the way of old king Chryoss to learn the wizardly arts, but he kept a good many of them in his employ.  My mentor remembered his days of service quite clearly, and he’d blather on and on for hours and hours about how many times he’d kept the king from walking into a trap or advised him well against some foolery or another…”

    Derrick tried and failed to stifle a laugh at this man’s blathering about someone else’s blathering—the irony was too rich to handle—and for a moment, he was afraid that he might have offended the man.  Clerique, however, laughed with him, a bright twinkle in his eye.

    “Yes, we were quite the mischievous lot in those days!  Many wonderful little practical jokes—completely harmless, mind you—that one can make with even a small knowledge of alchemy, and I had more than a little knowledge too.  I came up with thousands of jokes in my day.  In fact, later, I simply must show you a delightful bit of fun that one can have with only a bit of dried thyme, a piece of quartz, and a steak cooked medium-well.  But—Oh!  Here we are!”

    Derrick looked ahead to see a good sized (but still very small) ramshackle house standing before them.  Beyond that, he could see huts and buildings, with several familiar-looking people among them… and Lanther on the far side, speaking with the two other men.  He resisted the urge to facepalm himself.  That had been a rather long way to go… only to end up seventy yards from where they started.

    Clerique opened the door with a creak and beckoned him inside.  Derrick obeyed, chuckling at the ridiculousness of the whole situation, and was rather unsurprised at the sight that greeted him as he stepped in.  The house was but a single room, lined with writing desks and chairs that were, for the moment, empty.  One desk, much larger than the others, stood at the other side of the room in front of a massive, two-story-tall bookshelf.  Every inch of the desk’s surface was covered in parchments, or pens, or books—both very old tomes, and comparatively new-looking, paperback publications—along with rocks, crystals, two rather rusty knives, a bird skull, a candle, and other manners of miscellaneous knick-knackery.

    Clerique rushed over to said desk with a great deal of urgent haste and began at once to pour over his various papers and open books, muttering obscure numbers, figures, equations, and incomprehensible words that might have been Greek or Latin as he did so.  He skittered to the left side of the room, his pointy shoes making surprisingly little noise on the wooden floor, and picked up a piece of chalk from in front of a blackboard onto which he scribbled several Greek letters to the right of a rather complex-looking equation.  Circling the answer, he transposed it to a new place on the board, continued to mutter excitedly, and wrote a very complex collection of figures and symbols into a sentence that looked like this:

Σ(NhCO) + ƒα(☺/β)(Ac) → 4(AcNh)↑ + 3(CO)↑ + (√ƒx)Ω

    It seemed like a sophisticated mathematical or chemical equation—except for the smiley face… That didn’t seem very mathematical or sophisticated to Derrick amid the sigmas, omegas, and denotations of the functions of x; nor did any of it seem to mean anything at all.  To Clerique, however, it must have been very meaningful, since he gave a triumphant, “Aha!”

    With a ‘Eureka’ smile smeared messily over his face, the man shuffled to the right side of the room, where stood a table full of a myriad of jars, glass tubes, distillers, and beakers above lit Bunsen burners with purple or green chemicals frothing inside of them with an ominousness that would have made the most devout alchemist proud.  Selecting one jar full of reddish powder from amongst the others, he pulled out its huge, cork stopper with his teeth and took a pinch of its contents between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkled them into the beaker with the purplish concoction foaming within.  He hunched over to lay his hands on the table and his chin on his hands and watched like an eager child who is waiting for his toast in the morning.

    At first, nothing happened, and Derrick shifted uncomfortably, wondering what the whole display had been for, but after several seconds, the purple stuff in the glass began to turn blue and create huge blue bubbles that were not unlike soap suds.  Clerique leaned in even closer with great excitement, just before the mixture exploded with a loud bang that filled the air with green smoke accompanied by an oddly sweet smell.  Derrick took a step back, stunned, and held his breath, but the smoke dissipated before it reached him.  The man stood up slowly and turned toward the boy, a wild smile despite the fact that face and his previously pure white beard and hair had been stained burnt shades of dark blue and green with what was apparently soot.

    Before Derrick had a chance to ask if he was alright, the man shouted, “Yes!  I’ve got it!  The answer; I’ve figured it out!”

    “The answer?” Derrick asked hesitantly, “What are you talking about?”

    “Why, it’s seventy-nine of course, silly!  It’s all so obvious now!  Seventy-nine!  Oh, Clerique, you old ninny!”

    “What?!” Derrick asked, exasperated.

    “What?” Clerique asked innocently, as if he was completely ignorant of his whole display, “Why are you staring like that, boy?  Have I got something on my face?”

    Derrick buried his head in his hands.

    “Yes.” He answered through his palms before letting out a longsuffering sigh.

    …This was going to be a long, long, long, long day.