Chapter IX

Dream...Fear...Loop.

The scent of a dream was knitting the threads of present, of time and of power, for life is a cloth of reality knitted by threads of unreality.

The king could easily break out of the wires around his hands and feet. All the eyes were lost in a dream; no consciousness, the sense of time in vain.

He moved towards them. Hundreds of slept real creatures looking like trees were now in his hands. The fate of them one by one.

“Mortai was your name.”

The same hooded man revealed among those branches.

“I know thou art lost, remember nothing and wandering through this village with no intention. But take heed that thou having no intention will bring others having intentions. The villagers who gave thou room to sleep in were in fact these mindless creatures looking like dead bodies now. They wanted to give thou a route to follow while the route itself was made of the doubt called kindness.”

Mortai was silent, not giving answers, not glimpsing everywhere and not losing himself. He was just thinking. The simplest solution that a man could take.

He got near the house he just left, walking on the snow, hearing the little noises of drops being crushed under his boots.

He opened the door and went in. Wood crackled under his feet and he took a glimpse on the scenery inside.

Cold fireplace, a simple table and some plates. Nothing more to see, nothing more to feel than nothing. But there was something to hear. Always there is.

“He knows, He knows”

He heard

Mortai went out and stood in front of the lost bodies.

“Now thou can punish them. thou can express thine desire for thou art the king.”

Said the hooded man

“What was the sound that told me to bring out the stones?”

Said Mortai

“Travel beyond the mountains and thou wilt soon find.”

He said with a bow

The sea of snow awaited Mortai to be crushed under his mighty boots.