000 {dream}
He was walking down a hallway--dank and dark, the air barely breathable. There was only one door at the end of it, and though it parted for him, he got the sense it wouldn't do that for just anyone.
At the end of the hallway, he found a hoard. Even in the dim light, it glittered, reflecting light gold and silver, refracting through countless jewels. Golden triptychs were stacked open alongside coronets, goose-egg rubies, and strings of pearls--too there were paintings, and thrones, fur-trimmed mantles, intricately worked luxuries, and golden coins, more than any man could spend in one life.
He advanced on this massive pile, his hand came to rest on a gilt birdcage...and he threw it aside. Next was a jade spider, that too tossed aside like garbage. He dug through the pile of riches, heedless of the value of all that he discarded and toppled. As he worked, too, crowns and scepters and fur mantles fell onto his back, and though each of them weighed ten thousand tons he continued working, until he was scraping garnets and emeralds off the stone floor, and there found what he was looking for.
Standing up, dusting himself off, he studied his treasure with a smile. It was a coin--tarnished, old, battered, probably worth a single gil or less--but even so, it was precious to him. With practiced motions, he flipped the coin, and as it flew into the air, he himself began to feel very small...or perhaps the coin became very large...but the room around them was gone, there was only him in a void with a spinning coin filling his vision.
"I didn't think there were any magi left in the world."
A male voice spoke, and though he jerked his head to find him, the speaker was nowhere to be seen--though his voice was the common side of vulgar and without ornament or edification, there was something terribly, ironically honest about it. The coin spun before him, and through the strobe-light quality he could see that it was doubleheaded--no tail to it.
"You're not the only one suffering. The Empire has been toppling towns and villages left and right..."
A female voice this time, deep and rich, not like velvet but the ocean, or maybe a summer forest. She spoke of an empire with a resentment so cold it could freeze lava...meanwhile, he could see the spinning coin's head had a terribly familiar face to it...
"This...this is unpardonable."
Another male voice, but much, much older, creaky and distraught--honest, like the first man's but also steadfast and true, like a tree--what was unpardonable? He knew, and yet he didn't--it made his stomach knot in on itself, then his heart skipped a beat in surprise when he saw that the coin had his own face on it.
"When things fall, they fall."
Another male voice, the voice of vice, spoke, and he was all cigarette rasp, alcoholism and weariness that he tried to hide. This voice's fatalism, though he could understand why, he couldn't quite agree with--but then, squinting, he noticed that only one of the coin's faces was his own, the other...
"Did you think a little thing like the end of the world was going to do me in?"
He knew that voice. He knew that face. He knew, he knew, but he just...couldn't...quite...
"I feel like I'm on the verge of understanding something important. It's hard to describe..."
One more female voice, clear as a bell, as he stared at the coin, willing it to stop heads-up--
"But the harder I look for the answer, the more I lose my strength to fight."
And it jerked to a stop just after he jerked awake.