When Sal opened his eyes he'd expected seeing the ceiling fan twirling above him, or the white tiled floor below him.
Instead he found himself lying face up in a colosseum, an ancient arena. He remembered it from a textbook he'd read, the arena was built for the rich and high ranked, who would watch in amusement as the gladiators fought for their lives and their freedom.
To the best of Sal's understanding the colosseum floor was supposed to be sand but this one was hard, solid, and seemed to reflect the dark starless sky above him.
Sal got up shakily from the floor—his legs feeling like foreign objects attached to his person—and looked around him.
The seats in the arena were empty but he could hear voices, thousands of them echoing around him as if he were in the middle of two debate teams shouting opinions over each other.
"What the hell is happening?" he whispered to himself.
The voices suddenly stopped, and then as if by magic the colosseum was filled with people, all of them appearing in wisps of light and shadows.
On one side of the colosseum were large men and women, all of them as large as giants, all of them unbelievably beautiful. They all looked.... bright, like one was trying to outshine the other with their beauty.
On the other side were beings that shone with a different kind of brightness, like they weren't even trying to shine, but looking at them was like looking at the sun itself. They all had wings, some more than others, and their faces were bathed with unearthly glory.
Mala'chim, Sal thought, the angels.
Farthest away from the beautiful creatures were beings clothed in darkness, separated from the beings of light. Some looked human but they had a different kind of beauty to them, a sinister beauty, deadly even, others looked like monsters, a combination of different animals; a bat and a dog, a cat and a snake, a scorpion and a lion, like science experiments gone wrong.
Sal didn't need to think to know what they were; shedim, the demons.
Sal tried his best but he couldn't hide the fact that he was terrified, and confused. Who were these things?, and how did he know what to call them?
"Salome"
Sal turned upon hearing his full name, no one had spoken it in a long time, the last person to do so was his mother, her face stained with tears as she left him at the door of the orphanage and walked away from him.
That was the last time he'd seen her.
His eyes searched the colosseum until they landed on two figures that sat on two thrones.
Seated on the first throne was a man and the first thing that Sal noticed was the brown eye patch on one of the man's eyes, the other eye was a very startling gold, his hair was black, a black that glistened and rippled as though it were a fluid, with streaks of gray lining it to give the illusion of ageing. The man wore a suit, and looked like a CEO, which puzzled Sal greatly.
On the second throne sat a beautiful woman. Her hair was crispy brown, like a leaf in autumn, and it was embroidered with flowers, her light brown eyes examined Sal cautiously, as if waiting for him to perform some terrible feat.
The man smiled and spoke.
"Salome Nightshade, I am Odin, Norse god of war and you are welcome to the Elder's Court" the man—Odin— said, his voice carried an accent that Sal had never heard before, "I know you must be in shock and I assure you answers will come but there is no time, there is a matter at hand that you need to take care of"
"I'm definitely dreaming, there's no way in hell this can be real"
"Depends on the Hell actually" said the woman by Odin's side.
"Freya" Odin said, his voice cautioning.
Freya only smirked and looked at Sal with that same expectation.
"Forgive my wife, she gets excited at times" Odin smiled, it was disarming, a smile that made Sal want to trust him, "But I assure you, Salome, this isn't a dream, this is a message and I need you to pay attention, you're mind is impressively strong and Morpheus is struggling to sustain this astral projection."
Morpheus, the god of dreams?, it can't be.
"The world needs you Salome Nightshade" Odin said.
"My name is Salome Markson, okay and I don't understand what's happening here"
Odin's face began to ripple, the floor beneath Sal cracked.
"There is no time, the sun will rise soon and once it does this connection will be severed" Odin said. "Salome there is a great danger waiting to happen, we need you to find someone and end him or the world will fall"
"What are you talking about?" yelled Sal.
Then the people around him started shimmering and fading one by one.
"The sun is rising Salome, there's not much time left, but I must tell you it will be a difficult journey, a test of will and strength, of love and faith", his voice was grave, as if he too was scared for him.
The cracks in the floor spread and more of the Elder's began to vanish.
"I don't understand" Sal said.
"You will" Odin said with a smile, "that bastard made sure that you would"
Freya shimmered and disappeared beside Odin, and suddenly it was just them. Sal and someone who claimed to be a god.
"You must remember his name Salome, that is key to finding him"
But before Odin could say anything else he vanished as well and as soon as he did everything went dark.
***
Sal shot out of bed panting, both his shirt and his shorts drenched with sweat, he raked a hand through his hair remembering his dream. An arena of beautiful people, a message, a task to find a man whose name he didn't know.
No, it was nothing, just a dream and nothing more.
He nearly fell to the floor as he got down from his bed and made his way to the bathroom, he needed to get to school, it was boring but it was the only thing that made sense right now.
He took a quick shower and brushed his teeth, relishing in the feeling of normalcy for a couple of seconds, but as he walked out of the bathroom he stopped as something unbelievable was happening before his eyes.
There were letters on the wall, steaming as if they'd been written with fire. Sal felt his heart leap out of his chest and sink back the next second. He moved towards his steaming wall slowly, hands shaking as he approached the letters and touched them with the tip of his fingers.
The letters weren't English Sal could tell that much, they seemed older, like Sanskrit or some runic writing.
Sal found himself sifting through his mind, he knew the meaning, the same way he knew the electronic configuration of Titanium and what year the Roman Empire fell.
He knew it, he could feel it, and without knowing how, he translated the writing and said the word out loud.
"Percival"
A name.
You must remember his name Salome, that is the key to finding him.
Sal backed away from the letters slowly, what was happening to him? he needed to leave this place, probably call a doctor or something and find out what was wrong with him.
He hastily got dressed, occasionally glancing at the wall hoping the letters weren't still inscribed on it, but each time he was disappointed, for they were still there, stark and burning on his bedroom wall.
He grabbed his backpack and walked out of his room leaping his way downstairs.
As soon as he reached the last steps the smell of pancakes wafted through his nose and Sal wrestled his pulse to normal. Lester was awake, and the minute he laid his eyes on him he would know something was up. So Sal took a deep breath before he rounded the corner and stepped into the kitchen.
"Good morning Lester" Sal greeted.
Lester stood in front of the kitchen counter with a bright blue spatula in his hand. He wore a blue apron stained with flour and his beaming face seemed to light up the whole room.
Lester was the first and only boy Sal had ever said he truly loved, to him Lester wasn't just a friend, he was a brother, and if a relationship deeper than brotherhood existed, then that's what they would have.
"Good morning Sal" greeted Lester as he flipped a pancake from the frying pan onto a plate and passed it to Sal.
Sal took the plate gratefully and bit into his breakfast, he sighed in contentment, Lester had done it again.
"Someone must be hungry," said Lester, his hazel eyes shining brightly as he poured another batch into the frying pan. The kitchen filled with the sound of sizzling.
"Yeah" Sal said, "long night last night, I couldn't eat before going to work,"
Lester walked closer to him, his eyes peered at Sal in concern.
"Are you okay? you seem....terrified" said Lester.
Sal looked away from Lester's piercing gaze and shook his head.
"It's nothing, I'm fine," said Sal.
"Are you sure?"
Sal looked back at his friend, should he say something, would Lester think he was crazy?
"It's alright if you don't wanna talk about it, you know I won't force you," said Lester.
Sal took a huge bite of his pancake and walked out of the kitchen, still not meeting Lester's eyes.
He walked pass the living room, where the blanket he'd draped over Lester was folded and placed on the arm of the chair, the TV blaring with the news of Sal's attack at the Hells and Hounds the night before.
"Is that it?" Lester asked, "is it about last night?"
Sal sighed and grabbed a jacket from the rack.
"It's nothing Lester, I promise," said Sal as he opened the front door.
Lester leaned against the wall, pushing his stubborn hazel hair away from his eyes.
"Okay", he said, "I trust you"
Sal smiled.
"Me too, see you later Lester"
Lester nodded and before Sal left he heard Lester yell from inside.
"Don't get into any trouble!"
Sal scoffed as he shrugged on the jacket.
I think I already have.
***
Hours later Sal still couldn't get over the shock.
He sat in his history class, head bent and eyes trained on his sketchbook as he waited for their history teacher Mr Samson to walk in.
As usual people were avoiding him, shooting him wary looks and whispering continuously as they passed him.
It was funny, Sal thought, how people just assumed words spoken in small breaths of air went unheard by the ones they spoke of. Sal knew what they said, that he was a creep, a freak, a psycho.
None of those words hurt as much as they were supposed to, they'd just felt wrong, inappropriate, and at times annoying.
Today though his mind was so occupied by the events of that morning that he barely listened to what his peers were saying.
He was drawing to take his mind of it but found himself sketching Odin, and Freya, his wife. He drew the beings he'd seen, the gods, the mala'chim and the shedim, all gathered in one place, all asking for his help.
It was just a dream, Sal, get it together, thought Sal to himself, but he knew deep inside that it couldn't have been just a dream.
People don't get burning names on their walls after their dreams.
He was shaken out of his thoughts as the once rowdy class began to settle down, he raised his head and saw that their teacher had walked in but it wasn't Mr Samson, it was a different man.
The man was.....young and didn't look at all like he could teach history. He had a handsome oval face, with eyes like jade crystals, his hair brilliantly black. His pale skin resembled marble and made him look like one of the members of BTS. He dressed like them too, shirt untucked, tie loose, hands tucked casually in his pockets. He surveyed the class until his eyes landed on Sal's and then he smirked.
Sal felt heat rise to his cheeks as the man's eyes landed on his, they seemed to hold him in place and Sal found that he could not tear his gaze away until the man looked away from him and focused on the rest of the class.
"Good morning everyone, my name is Mr Herman, and I'll be taking the History class for today, Mr Samson had something important to do and so couldn't make it to today's lesson but be rest assured I am an excellent teacher," said Mr Herman, there was a lilt in his tone, almost like an accent, British maybe? but not quite, Sal had heard it somewhere before, he just couldn't remember where.
"Okay class, let's get started" said Mr Herman.
For the first time, Sal listened in class, partly because he wanted to forget and drawing wasn't helping and partly because he was curious about Mr Herman.
He was a good teacher, confident and charismatic, he would sometimes lock eyes with Sal and smile a knowing smile which bugged Sal a lot, but the thing that bugged him the most was the accent.
He was sure he had heard it before, it was at the very surface of his memory, but before he could remember the bell rang for next period.
"Amazing, that's all for today, in your next class I am sure Mr Samson will take it from here, class dismissed," said Mr Herman.
The students got up from their seats and began trooping out of class, their voices animated with excitement, Sal had never seen the students of his high school so lively before, whoever this Mr Herman was, he was good.
"Mr Markson?" Mr Herman called.
Sal turned to see that the man was bent over a piece of paper.
"Come forward I have a message for you"
Sal walked forward. For some reason his heart was beating uncontrollably, why was he so nervous? As he reached the man he saw a ripple in the air, as if he was looking through water.
"Yes sir" Sal said.
Mr Herman looked at him, still smiling that same knowing smile.
"Did you like today's lesson?" he asked.
"Yeah" Sal answered, unable to hide the nerves in his voice, "you're really good"
"I've been doing this for a long time"
"You said you had a message for me?" Sal pointed at the piece of paper.
Mr Herman chuckled.
"You know for someone who was blessed with deeper sight you sure are blind to the truth, aren't you?"
Sal creased his brows in confusion, what was he talking about?
"Excuse me?" Sal said
"Come on Nightshade, peel through the screen, tear the veil in half, you have the power to see through the Shade, so see," said Mr Herman.
Nightshade.
The name echoed repeatedly in his mind, and the way he said it, the way he talked. The accent.
And then it dawned on him, and he saw.
Truly saw.
The BTS star look-alike began to shimmer and disappear revealing a man much older, he had a beard and hair of pure gold, the eyes that Sal thought simply looked like jade were actual jade jewels embedded as irises.
He was still dressed as a BTS star but in his right hand was a cadduseus staff and over his shoulders was a messenger bag.
Sal's eyes widened and he took several steps back until his legs hit the desk chair behind him.
He knew who this was, but how could it be?
"Hermes?!" said Sal.
Mr Herman smiled.
"In the flesh, or whatever my corporeal body's made of," he said.
"Hermes, the messenger of the gods, god of wanderers, travellers...." said Sal.
"Amongst many others" interrupted Hermes.
"So last night wasn't a dream", said Sal, "you guys exist"
"We exist, yes, but to only those that believe," said Hermes.
Sal couldn't believe.
The gods were real?
The Elder's Court was real?
"Why are you here?" asked Sal.
"Like I said, I have a message for you" said Hermes as he handed over what had once been a piece of paper and was now a golden scroll, his sleeve rode up, revealing a tattoo of a pair of wings on his wrist.
Sal took it and unrolled it. There were names on the scroll, each of them written with beautiful handwriting.
"The gods need you to find and kill Percival, a powerful necromancer gifted with magic from birth, he plans on doing something that could potentially bring danger to the people of this realm and many others" said Hermes.
"Why me?" asked Sal.
"Simple, because you're the only one who can, we know of your gifts, the ones you are aware of, as well as the ones you are unaware of" said Hermes.
Sal scoffed in disbelief.
"You can't be serious"
"I know that this is difficult to understand" Hermes said, he took a step forward, he suddenly looked so out of place in a senior year history classroom, "but right now we need you, you have been called, you have been chosen"
"But what if I can't do it, what if I don't want to do it" said Sal.
Hermes sighed and placed a hand on Sal's shoulder and Sal felt a jolt of power race through him from that single touch.
"We heard your prayer, Salome, you said you wanted to be more than what you were, well here's your chance, how do you know you will fail if you do not try," said Hermes.
Sal didn't answer, instead he creased his brows and looked at the scroll again.
"Whose names are these?" asked Sal.
"They are the Shaded beings that will help you complete your hunt, you must find each of them first before seeking out Percival, or else you will surely fail" said Hermes.
The staff in Hermes's hand began to glow.
"I'm afraid my time is up, there are many more messages to send, I must leave you now," said Hermes.
"Wait!, how do I know who to find first?!"
"You will see it," said Hermes.
And before Sal could say anything again, the messenger god was gone.