Story based on a dream I had

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The King was raving.

Not that anyone would ever say that; he was the king.  You didn’t mention he was raving  — or hallucinating, or having fits — if you wanted to hold on to your head, your soul, and your volition.

But the King had gotten it in his head that one of his trusted advisers and lieutenants had betrayed him, and was going around the castle, using The Voice that filled every corner of that huge edifice, declaring that when he found that Lieutenant who’d betrayed him, he would kill them, rend them, destroy them.

And because this wasn’t just any King or any edifice, all of his lieutenants were running around shooting one of their lieutenants in turn, which was getting more than a bit exhausting and very bloody.

And me?  I was staying out of the way and trying not to be seen.  When you are a human in this place, in The Castle of the King, you do your damndest not to attract any attention save that attention that brought you there – and since the one that had brought me there was currently chasing his lieutenant around trying to shoot him and complaining that the man wouldn’t hold still for it, well, I didn’t want his attention either.

And that worked fine until the King called a general assembly.  You didn’t not go to those, but even sitting in the back, I felt someone come up behind me.  Not my paramour, such as he was; no, he was in front of me, eyes glued to the podium and the throne at the front.

No, this was another human-like person, and he had a hand on my shoulder.  And then, while the King talked about traitors in his midst, a bag came down over my head.

I was going to die.  I had never known anything so clearly as I knew that.  I was dying, here, too far from home, with a burlap sack over my head to hide my shame.

An image flashed into my mind. No, a vision.  I did not see visions, I who did not belong here.  But there it was, a creature all scales and plates, green and blue as the sea it was crawling out of, our sea, the sea the Castle of the King hulked overlooking.  

It was coming.  And it was the reason the King was raving.

I lost consciousness, only then understanding that that was why the bag was there.

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