POV Derek
– Dad! Are you still asleep? Wake up! You're going to miss everything!
Two high children's voices and the thud of feet running across the thick carpet were what snapped me out of the captivity of sleep. And I was glad of it: all night long I had been haunted by the same dream, the nightmare I had seen so often before.
A thick fog. A battlefield covered with the bloody bodies of enemies and friends. They have already fallen into eternal sleep and will never return to their families, never see their loved faces or hear their favorite voices. I stand on a large, flat rock, towering above this chaos. Alive, unharmed. My armor is drenched in blood. It is not my blood. I haven't spilled a drop of my own blood. This blood is everywhere, I can even taste it in my mouth. My blood-slicked hair falls over my eyes, but I don't touch it, don't even think about the fact that it's obstructing my vision. My right hand clutches my sword tightly, red, covered in blood and murder. Beneath my feet lies King Juris. He's dead. His entrails peek out from his ripped open stomach. A wide golden crown still sits firmly on Juris' head. I bend down, struggling to remove the crown, which is tangled in the dead king's hair, and place it on my head. I feel nothing. No pain, no fear, no disgust at myself and the fact that I took his crown and kingdom from the dead man. Nothing. The battlefield is covered in snow, so coarse and frequent that in a moment the corpses are gone, as if someone in heaven had deliberately sent this snow here to bury this bloody mess, this abomination underneath. "You are not a king!" suddenly comes a whisper to my ears, causing me to look around, but only to see no one. "Murderer! Impostor! Burn in Hell! You and all your descendants!" I hear the same creepy whisper. "I did not kill him! The king handed me the crown himself!" – I try to justify myself, but I hear grave laughter in response. The crown on my head starts to shrink, making my skull creak and crack, and I scream silently in pain, but after a minute I am completely covered in white icy snow, turning me into an ugly statue, frozen with a horrible grimace on my face....
Opening my eyes, I quickly looked around my chambers to make sure the nightmare was gone, that I was in the palace. Still just as poisoned and slowly dying.
– Alva! Willa! Good morning, my sneaky squirrels! – I happily greeted my daughters, who had already climbed up on my tall, wide bed and grabbed the soft pillows, hitting me lightly in the face with them. – But enough! Put the pillows down and tell me what you dreamed about today.
– I dreamt of my mother! – Willa said eagerly, throwing the pillow away from her. – We were in a field of daisies! I ran away to the river, and when I came back she was lying in the flowers! So strange and cold!
"Poor child! How many times does she see the same nightmare as me?" – I thought with pain in my heart.
– Tonight you will dream of a great ship leaving on a long voyage. You will be the captain, and I will be your helmsman," I said hastily, regretting that I had asked about her dream.
– Could I be a pirate? – Vilja asked with hope in her eyes and wrapped her hands around my face.
– Of course you can, but remember that pirates are our enemies. They rob our ships and take our sailors prisoner," I smiled and looked at my eldest daughter. – What about you, Alva? What did you dream about?
