Chapter Text
As Abel Remno was approaching 13 years of age, he had an extremely vivid dream.
In this dream, a stream of women each fell limpid-eyed for his charms. After a few encouraging words, or him lightly smoothing out a situation for them, they would, one after another, profess deep admiration for him and earnestly request to spend time in his company. As years passed in this dream-life, he began to be rewarded with more than just their company, and had many encounters far beyond the callow imaginings he’d begun to foster.
The later details of the dream, like his kingdom almost falling to famine, growing revolution, or a favourite maid assassinating him in cold blood, barely registered in his psyche after these more intimate moments (for distinctly teenage reasons).
The fact it had ended with him dying pointlessly, reflecting on his short life having been a waste of breath, did not cause him to start awake in shock; that had been the only part of the dream that fit into his current self-image.
This dark warning, a terrible future reaching back, would have little impact on him; he would start no desperate scramble to avoid this destiny. Across a thousand repetitions, for a thousand reasons, he’d walk the same failed path again.
Unless, of course, a girlish hand of fate aggressively slammed him onto a new course.
A year later, Abel rarely woke up remembering dreams at all. A strict sleep schedule had been naturally imposed by his day’s routine; with every waking hour spent studying or training, he typically fell into bed exhausted at dusk and woke up, his entire body screaming with soreness, around dawn.
The side effect of dreamless sleep was a minor annoyance to him; like teenaged romantics through history, he hoped to imagine a moment with the object of his affections. In this case, the young Princess Mia Luna Tearmoon.
His only dreams, rare visions of a very different future, were now primed to disturb him, but less with his weakness and tragic fate than his apparent taste in fantasies.
Was he so disloyal that he was dreaming of many other women, when he thought he’d devoted his heart to one girl? He realised as well that the encounters that had once enraptured him were deeply suspect as well.
Was it gratitude, or obligation and fear of his influence, that motivated these women’s passions? He felt particular disgust that he dreamt of nights spent with Remno servants… what type of scum was he that his subconscious didn’t appreciate their inability to refuse?
Unfortunately, these occasional dreams visiting the majority of timelines left him with a bit of a complex.
Shortly before the false revolution in Remno, he’d be visited by this future once more.
Abel slouched languidly in his chair as one of his maids read a message to him. He mostly ignored her; he was irritably playing with his food, stale bread and salt pork once again.
“Monica, aren’t people saying the famine is over? Is this really the best the kitchen could do? I’m expecting a feminine guest later, I’d like to serve something better.”
His maid rolled her eyes; while hardly as gaunt as the commoners outside the palace, the loose hang of her uniform evinced many skipped meals.
“As I was saying, your highness, the execution date has been set. The Chancellor is asking if you want to voice an official objection.”
“Eh, I don’t care to.” Abel replied, continuing to moodily move his food around his plate.
“He was asking because you went to school together, your highness, out of consideration for your feelings.”
It was Abel’s turn to roll his eyes. “I barely remember her, I’m not into scrawny types.” His maid failed to suppress a look of revulsion, then excused herself and left.
He briefly felt hot shame fill his chest at having caused such disdain, but it faded soon enough. He wouldn’t think of it again until he saw a certain illustration being passed around several months later.
An emaciated woman, filthy and dressed in rags. The unexpected dignity of her bearing was contrasted by the terrified expression on her face. She was framed by the stocks and blade of a guillotine in the foreground.
“Yeah, total scrawny type…” Abel muttered to himself. He passed the parchment along to another of his friends and didn’t think of Mia Luna Tearmoon again for the rest of his days.
As Abel woke up, he had to laugh a little.
“Ok, that’s just moronic.” His actions in the dream were absurd enough to go beyond implausible, ranging instead into parody.
At this point, the Abel in this unlikely splinter of time was so far from the majority that those futures could hardly reach him; this would be the final vision.
Reassured, after that farcical nightmare, that his past dreams weren’t related to his inner self, he forgave himself for their strange contents and categorised them as a mix of cautionary tale and the madness of puberty.