The following is a variation on a dream I had while sleeping 16 hours tuesday night.  Please excuse mistakes (or comment about them).  I haven't read it over yet.  Hopefully the formatting doesn't get too messed up when I paste it in. 

Kaerig couldn’t shake the mix of fear and apprehension that had always beset him before entering battle.  Countless times in his thirty years he had lead the charge, but the feeling never changed.

He turned to survey the army behind him.  His brother Morovin stood to the left—two years younger, two inches taller, and twice as strong.  On the right Yaerniv stood immobile, muscles tensed to spring into action.  When these three fought together at the heads of their army they had never suffered defeat, even against numbers five and six times their own.  The heroic exploits of these three, and two others who’d given their lives for the cause, had finally brought peace after ninety years of war.

Now three inseparable friends again stood together with the dawn, armies left far behind, green, brown, and silver eyes surveying the monument before them as they had so many opposing armies in the past.  But here there was no strategy to discuss, only a screaming gargoyle knocker on a crooked wooden door.

What Kaerig could see of the house seemed to be falling apart before his eyes.  The thick canopy of dead branches was twisted together so tightly that even the bright morning sun found difficulty penetrating the gloom.  A Grey mist swirled around the base of the structure.  With silent nods from his companions, he walked forward and gripped the cold iron knocker of what History called “The House of the Dead Warrior.”

He had heard the stories.  No living man had ever exited.  All who entered quickly joined the ranks within.  Kaerig thought that the possibility of meeting the great warriors of old might be reason enough to risk his life.  But he was here for far more.  He’d been called by a dream.

The door swung open without a sound—no slow-creaking hinges, no ethereal mist—only a flat black hole where the door had stood a moment before.  More than slightly unnerved, he thrust the tip of his torch in before him.  It’s light was abruptly gone, swallowed by the blackness.  He drew it back out, and the fire came with it.  The torch looked no different, as if he’d just pulled it from behind a thick curtain.  Kaerig glanced back, not bothering to mask the fear on his face.  His brother’s tan skin was three shades paler, and even Yaerniv’s impassive silver eyes betrayed a glimmer of fear.

Kaerig heard the familiar ring of a sword unsheathed only to find his own length of steel held before him.  Slightly comforted by the familiar weight in his hand, he took a deep breath, and plunged into the blackness.

The commander found himself in a small stone antechamber.  He turned around just in time to catch Yaerniv’s forehead with his own.  He held his sword wide as they tumbled to the floor to avoid sticking his friend.  He sat up and was rubbing the welt on his head when Morovin stumbled out of the solid brick wall, stepping as gingerly as he was able over their sprawled bodies.  Kaerig watched his brother’s face.  The big man glanced to the wall he had just exited, seeming to piece together the events that landed them on the floor.

Kaerig accepted the hand offered to help him up.  Sheathing his sword, he moved back to the wall.  It was solid against his palm.  If they exited at all, it would not be the way they had entered.

Determined, he walked back across the antechamber into the hall beyond.  He caught his companions’ eyes reflecting the look in his own.  He had seen that look only once before, when all three were certain that the battle they fought would be his last.  They resolved to die fighting.

The hall before them was larger than any he’d ever seen, floor to vaulted ceiling made entirely of some unidentifiable green-gray stone.  There were no windows.  The only furniture was a small wooden table, barely discernable at the hall’s far end.

Alone at the table stood a tall, slender form clad in battle armor.  Her helmet plumed high with the feathers of a white owl, breastplate polished to brilliant red, accentuating her feminine features.  Pleated leather skirts covered her thighs, reaching down to matching greaves and thick boots.  On her left hip a full quiver of white-feathered arrows hung comfortably.  The matching bow was nestled on her left shoulder: tall, thin, and red.  Her right hand clenched a tall staff in a red-leather fist.  The hardwood battle-staff was carved along its length in indecipherable runes of strength and battle, of death, blood, and war.  Its ends were capped in the same shining blood-metal she wore on head and on her breast.

Bloodwhirl, her enemies had named her, though Kaerig new her as Rovina.  She was a legend.  She had fallen at his side, taking the deathblow meant for him.

She was his wife.

The staff clattered to the floor as she returned his embrace.

She spoke without moving her lips; her words rang inside his mind.

All three of you together…how did you die?

We didn’t.

Abruptly she stiffened, pulling away.

No!  Don’t go!  Stay with me…stay here forever.  There is nothing but pain in the world.

She flung herself around his neck, desperately squeezing him in a tight embrace.  He gasped as her metal breasts dug into his ribs.  This was not what he had dreamed…not what he had imagined at all.

She cried, a whisper in his ear, a drop on his shoulder—he hugged her back, a passion two-years suppressed resurfacing before he could resist.

Please, I’ve waited here so long…  Fall now; stay here with me forever.

I…I love you, Rovina.  But I can’t stay.  I’m here for our daughter.

No…she’s dead.

It was in that very moment, in that forced denial, that Kaerig knew for certain that all he had dreamed was true.  Even as she died, Rovina had birthed him a child—on the wrong side of eternity.

There is a child.

Yes, yes there is.  But she is one of us, now.  No one leaves this place alive.  She cannot, and you will not.  But you must choose to stay!  Stay and be with me forever.

No!  I—

Then in death you will switch eternities again, and haunt the land of the living forever.

Kaerig gasped, peeling himself away from her.  He tried to clear his head, to think this through rationally, but he could not.  His fingers clenched and loosened around the leather grip of his half-drawn sword.  It would be so easy to die now, by his own hand, to let his sword find its final rest in his flesh, and he his lover’s eternal arms. 

But the dream returned, an image and a cry.  Here his daughter lie trapped, a premature baby unchanged in two years of death.  She deserved a chance to grow, to live, even a brief moment, among the living, and perhaps to earn her way back to this very place in death.

Where is she?

No!  Kaer, please!  I lost you once; I don’t want to lose you forever.

Where is my baby?

A door appeared to his left.  Tears flowing freely, she nodded toward it.

Kaerig did not know how long the exchange had lasted, or what his companions had heard, but when he moved, they did also, without a hint of question in their eyes.  The wooden door led to a wooden stair, spiraling ever downward.  Occasionally they came to landings, rooms and halls were sprawled on either side.  Sometimes they were hailed by its residents, often ignored.  So many he longed to visit, to hear the tales from the legends themselves.  But he was reminded of his father’s wisdom.

Battle is far more glorious in the legends of the past than the fighting of the present.

He wondered what stories were being told of him now, what a great hero he was being made into.

The dead foot soldier deserves more credit than I.  I gave some blood; he gave his life.

The trek continued ever downward, the stair sometimes narrow, sometimes wide, sometimes so steep they had to turn and climb down backwards.  But though it seemed they traveled for days, they did not hunger or thirst, their bodies did not grow weary.  Yet the toll was paid with their minds, for somehow, somewhere in that endless spiral, each one grasped a tiny part of the meaning of the word forever.  Should they ever return to life, they could not live again the blissful ignorance they once knew.

It was in the very instant that Kaerig came to that understanding, that the stair was transformed into a wooden room.  He seemed to be in the hull of a boat.  On all sides, the walls sloped up to a flat roof.  There was no entrance to the deck above, but in the very center, a room without a door.  He imagined it housed the supports for the main mast above.

Vondrominous appeared through the wall—once his most fearsome enemy.  He stood naked, body covered in blue tattoos and war paint.  On his left arm he wore a great circular shield, edged in razor-sharp steel.  In his right hand he bore a towering double-headed battleaxe as if it were weightless.  His long black hair was twisted into braids, studded with sharp flecks of metal, glass, and bone.  There was no man Kaerig feared more, no man he hated more than Vondrominous, the man who killed his wife.

Ha!  So who finally had the pleasure of sinking his blade in your gut?  The giant man’s face contorted into a deeper sneer.  That whore of yours stole the joy from me.

Kaerig felt the heat rising in his ears and neck.

Hold your tongue, Bear, or we’ll see if the blade that took your life can take your death as well.  A deep breath.  Come now, neither of us can hurt the other now.  Is life so close that we cannot put our grievances behind us?

What do you want of me, Emerald-eye?

My daughter.

Ha Ha Ha!  Then the rumor is true—the living walks with the dead to rescue his whoreson.  What a touching tale.  I could not pass the chance to end it on the blade of my axe!

The big man roared forward with surprising agility.  Kaerig dodged quickly outside the range of the blade’s first deadly arc.  They circled, feinting, probing for weaknesses both knew they wouldn’t find.

Kaerig wondered if his blade would even stop the ghost’s battleaxe, much less wound Vondrominous himself.

He lunged forward, blade extended straight out.  A Chop from his opponent’s shield forces the blow downward.  The move left him over-extended, chest directly in the path of the axe screaming in from his left.  At the last possible moment he ducked, rolling underneath the blow.  With a flick of the wrist, his sword turned up under the shield, catching the meat of the Bear’s inner thigh.  The razor-edged shield came slicing down through leather gauntlet into his left wrist.

First blood.

The battle-fury took over, pain and blood ignored in the art of the dance.  Circle.  Feint.  Parry.  Strike.  Dodge.  Laugh.  Swing.  Roll.  Block.  Step.  Breathe.  Circle.  Chop.

On and on it went, till breath came in gasps.

Where is my baby?

Abruptly, the light was gone.

 

Morovin’s attention began to wander.  He glanced to the right, examining the insides of this mysterious boat.  He noticed a stack of barrels where none were before.  Curiosity got the best of him, and before he realized what he was doing, his hand gripped the neck of an ancient bottle of wine.

Suddenly, his brother’s voice rang in his head:

Where is my baby?

Almost before the cry had ended, all light in the boat fled.  He felt his cheeks burning.  How could he have been so easily distracted from their task?  He flung the bottle in frustration.

 

Yaerniv watched the battle in silence, analyzing every move, critiquing every mistake.  It was not his battle to fight, but it was not every day one witnessed battle between death and life.  Both friend and foe began to tire, their combined loss of blood and sweat made the floorboards slick, the footing precarious.

A break in the action.

Where is my baby?

Darkness.

Shattering glass.

A blinding fireball relit the room where Vondrominous stood moments before.  Behind quickly spreading flames, a door.

 

Kaerig let his companions rush him past the flames the through the door.  Under weary eyelids, he glimpsed a small cradle.  He felt his bloodied hand pried from the hilt of his sword.

Crying.

The light weight of human life was gently placed in his hand.

His daughter cried.

 

Kaerig opened his eyes to darkness.  He spit long red hair from his mouth, pushing it back over Rovina’s ear.  He brushed her cheek with his lips, untangling his legs from hers as she woke.

“You’re pregnant,” he whispered.

Her brown eyes looked up at him, still half-asleep.

“Yes.”

You are hereby awarded the official "Amazing Author" award.
Only one mistake that I noticed: On the first paragraph that Kaerig and Vondrominous are fighting, I'm assuming "A Chop from his opponent’s shield forces the blow downward." should read, "A Chop from his opponent’s shield forced the blow downward."
Tense agreement is good. :-)
Great work though.

wow...that was really cool! kinda reminded me of a few movies though...were you watching LOTR by chance? nice ending, would be a great story to expand upon, ill even publish it :-D

yes! more more! we wants more! good job, matt.

*stunned* what an ending. it leaves me wanting a bit more detail... but the emotion! if you dream like that then i am quite jealous. *still stunned* you've really matured in your writing. kudos!

wow, that was very very impressive. It sucked me in, and made me sigh a huge relief at the end. That was an awesome dream; do you have many like that?