The Pleasure of Memory by Welcome Cole Page A

leaves. He had the overpowering urge to go up to it, to touch it, to perhaps sit in it and rest there in its safety. He was about to start up the steps when something shuffled behind him.
    Beam wheeled around with his knife out. “I know you’re there!”
    His words echoed off into time.
    The room appeared empty. He couldn’t make anything out in the shadows. Still, his heart was trying to kick its way out of his chest.
    Then the air began to change. Thirty feet out from the dais, the shadows transformed. Darker air flowed up from the floor like oily smoke, spiraling lazily around itself as it rose. It looked alive, looked as if it were taking on substance, looked to be coalescing into matter. Gradually, it separated into two distinct columns that each quickly melded into the form of a man, each wielding a longsword.
    Beam instinctively backed away. His heel caught the first step to the dais, causing him to trip and land back hard on the stairs. He scrambled back tighter into them and anchored his hands to their curled edges. He was dreaming, there was no other explanation. He never should have eaten that wormy stinking rabbit.
    The two figures were now fully flesh, though they lacked any mortal colors. One of the figures was a giant of a man, a knight clad in an oppressive black armor. The other appeared to be a Parhronii man of normal height like himself, though he was much lither. His hair was pale and he wore it long and loose over his shoulders.
    The combatants moved in the round, revolving pensively around each other with their swords at the ready in anticipation of the fight. Time passed slowly. Beam was beginning to doubt they were going to do anything more than dance when the dark knight suddenly lunged. The lithe man parried and immediately struck back. The sound of angry metal reverberated violently through the chamber. Steel flashed with violent authority. The chilling clangor of steel sang through the chamber as showers of sparks bounced to their death across the dark floor beneath them.
    Oddly, the fighters made no attempt to address him. In fact, they didn’t even seem aware he was there. It only made the entire experience that much more surreal.
    Beam rubbed his good eye. He again told himself this was a dream, that any second now he’d wake up in a cold sweat back near the remains of that wretched rabbit. But in truth, he didn’t believe a word of it. There was no way he was going to wake up any time soon. Some dreams are relentless. Some dreams must be endured until they free you or simply run out of fire. Some dreams will kill you.
    When he lowered his hand, the dark knight was on the offensive. He flew into his smaller opponent in a barrage of cuts and thrusts. The lesser man fell back from the assault, losing more ground with each blow. The knight was unrelenting, hitting faster and more brutally until he finally delivered a strike that threw the other man from his feet.
    The Parhronii man landed on his knees on the cold, black floor a few yards out from the dais. His sword hit the ground in a peal of metal that Beam felt clear through to his bones. The man slowly pushed himself up from the ground, dragging his sword back with him. His pale hair poured down over his shoulders as he struggled to rise.
    As Beam watched him, he was gripped with a startling revelation. This man wasn’t Parhronii. The man was a stinking savage. A goddamned Vaemyn! He had the same pale hair. He had the same svelte, nearly gaunt physique, the same sharp opalescent horns curling up like delicate boar’s tusks from under each ear. But that was where the similarity ended.
    This one wore his long hair unrestrained, not braided. And he wasn’t outfitted in the typical coarse savage's rags or warrior’s armor Beam was accustomed to. This one was dressed in ornate, knee-length mail composed of thousands of tiny golden scales, and it was bound at the waist by a rich belt of silver-studded leather. Silver bracers with detailed