Long Live the Emperor: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Work was hard, and sometimes the days were just too long.

That’s what Alvin thought to himself as he kicked his shoes off and flopped down on his bed in his cramped room. He just wanted to lie down for a few minutes. Surely closing his eyes for a minute or two wouldn’t hurt...

But the moment he closed his eyes, he fell asleep.

Things started normally enough. He was elbow-deep in dishwasher grease and putting in time for a bit of extra pocket change. The world around him was blurry and unclear, but more vivid than it had been years ago. Reading heaps of fiction and a few art classes had honed Alvin’s imagination, and his dreams were more vivid than they used to be. He’d always had particularly intense dreams, but thinking about escaping into worlds he could shape with his will had pushed the skill to a new level. Despite all the improvements, though, there was one thing he hadn’t cracked. Hands.

He glanced at his fingers and saw nothing more than a blurry mess where his fingers should have been.

Definitely dreaming.

Alvin felt a smile touch his face in that lucid state between sleep and waking. This was the one part of his life he truly had control over. Here he could do whatever he wanted.

He tossed the dishes aside. Why work in his dreams? He did enough of that in real life. They shattered on the floor beside him, and as usual, his manager came running around the corner. His face was red, and it looked like he was about to scream. Alvin imagined steam coming out of his ears, and as he imagined it, it was so.

“Alvin! What do you think--“

His manager didn’t finish his sentence. A train burst through the wall behind Alvin, missing him by inches and rolling straight over his manager with a dramatic splat.

“All aboard the sexy babe express!” The train tooted a horn, and Alvin turned to find the conductor was a scantily clad woman wearing scarcely more than underwear. She blew a kiss at him as he boarded. Alvin recognized her from his previous dreams. She’d been one of his high school teachers a few years back. She’d never dressed in anything as revealing as what she wore in his dreams, but he could do whatever he wanted here.

Alvin boarded and smiled at the conductor. “The usual place.”

“Yes, sir!” the conductor grinned, winking at him as she pushed open the door behind her, leading deeper into the train.

The compartment behind the conductor was filled with lush velvet pillows, and every one of those pillows had a beautiful woman resting on it.

“Oh my god! It’s Alvin!” A girl from his high school gym glass clutched the girl next to her and shrieked with glee.

“Alvin, welcome back!” A raven-haired beauty folded her book in her lap and smiled up at him. She’d sat across from him in the library once.

“Here to play with us again?” asked a brunette who’d complimented his hair nearly five years ago.

They were astonishingly beautiful, even more than they were in real life. And all of them were as naked as the day they were born and ready to do anything to please him.

Alvin ran his hand along a few bare breasts and cheeks, but eventually shook his head. “Not today, ladies! I’m in a bad mood right now. I think I need something a bit more intense.”

“Ooh, you’re heading to the chains and whips room! Can I come? I love to watch you call the others naughty girls...” the brunette batted her eyelashes.

“Sure,” Alvin chuckled. She skipped along behind him as he opened the next door.

Behind the next door, he expected to find a room clad in dark leather. It should have been lit by nothing more than candlelight and clad in cold stone. It was a private room of his own creation, but he wouldn’t be alone within it. While there were plenty of women he adored just as they were, there were more than a few who he thought could use a little attitude adjustment.

The owner of the restaurant he worked at, for one. She always snubbed her nose at her workers and rarely deigned to speak with anyone besides the manager. All she did was show up to empty the safe or force everyone to drop what they were doing for pictures for some hair-brained marketing scheme on social media sites. She’d once backed into his car with her porch while he was parked nearby and had the nerve to claim it was his fault for parking near her instead of her shitty driving. How she tilted her nose up and practically spat on him grated his nerves to this day.

Alvin thought she looked much better on her knees, begging for forgiveness. There was something very tension-melting about seeing that arrogant expression slide off her face. This was supposed to be a nap, not bedtime, so he knew he’d be on a time limit. Still, surely he could squeeze one session, right?

He was getting rather excited to do a bit of relaxing in a hurry. There wasn’t a single better way to spend a dream, so when the next door opened to a room other than the one he expected, his heart practically jumped out of his chest.

Brass horns blew, a thousand men unsheathed their swords and salute, and an astonishingly handsome man dressed more like a peacock than a human stepped forward with his hands hung loosely at his side.

“Welcome, fellow dreamwalker! My name is Aldrich, Baron of Eastwater, and boy, do I have an offer for you...”

***

Alvin looked around, confused. “What happened? Where’s my--“

“Dungeon?” Aldrich, the Baron of Eastwater, said with eyebrows raised. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a dungeon so creatively stocked. It was quite a sight. I had to move it when I combined my dreamscape with yours. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to talk with you here.”

Annoyed, Alvin waved his hand at the baron. “Go away.”

He expected Aldrich of Eastwater to vanish in the blink of an eye. But the baron stayed right where he was.

Aldrich chuckled. “I’m not a part of your dream. You’re a part of mine. But don’t worry, I just want to talk.”

This was strange. Really strange. Normally, when he was dreaming, anyone he spoke to would do their best to convince him he wasn’t dreaming. That was just the way dreams worked. Alvin tried to imagine himself back where he was, but something about this dreamscape clenched around him. He didn’t move an inch.

“Don’t be like that,” Aldrich chuckled. “You’re the only other-worlder I could connect to, so I really need you to hear me out. I think our souls have some sort of special resonance. You’re nearly an exact match for me and vice versa. I think you’re an alternate version of me from a different reality. A strange one too, considering what I saw in that room of yours.”

Alvin suddenly felt heat flush into his cheeks. “You shouldn’t go prying through other people’s things.”

Why was he arguing with this figment of his imagination? He just needed to concentrate on getting back to the dream he was supposed to be having. But then the fancily dressed nobleman straight out of the middle ages wrapped his hand around Alvin, and Alvin saw his hands. They were as clear and unblurred as if he were viewing them in real life.

Alvin gulped. What was going on?

“You see, I’m a baron in a faraway kingdom. You know what a baron is?” Aldrich of Eastwater said.

“Yeah.”

“Excellent! I run my own little private estate and rule over it like a prince of a small kingdom. Most of my land is a beautiful forest, and there are fertile fields aplenty. But judging by your tastes, you might be more interested in fertile women! I’ve always spurned the pleasures of the flesh myself, but that’s only because I knew it would be far too easy to indulge as much as I pleased. There’s an acute lack of men our age back where I come from. Particularly men who rule over a barony like mine. I think you’d find the place rather enjoyable.”

“You want me to come to visit you?” Alvin asked.

“Not quite. You see, I long to explore other realms, and yours, in particular, seems both strange and powerful. I’d like to offer an equitable exchange. I get to pilot your body around for a bit, and you enjoy yourself in mine. I think it’s more than a generous deal as it stands. I’m a lord, after all, and you’ll have the run of my estate for as long as I’m borrowing your body. My attendants won’t let you wreck the place, but they’ll be happy to jump to obey your orders.”

That did sound like a good deal. Too good to be true, which was why Alvin was skeptical.

“I’m skeptical,” Alvin said. “How do I know this isn’t all just a dream?”

“A good point,” Aldrich admitted. “Tell you what, let me borrow your body for a minute, and I’ll give you a little gift. You see, I’m a rather talented Dreamwalker. That’s how I got here from my dreams to yours. One of my spirits is an earth spirit; she is rather good at turning scrap metals into gold. I already sent her over to scout out your living arrangements, and she can turn a bit of trash you might have laying about into things that are far more precious. So take what she leaves you with as a gift, and I promise to meet you again tonight.”

The nobleman smiled, face charming and grinning brightly. He looked sincere, and so against his better judgment, Alvin took Aldrich’s hand in his own and shook it.

Note:

Testing out a new idea. I'll write this for a bit to see if I (and you guys) like it. I have notes and a vague outline, but I'm really just feeling out the story right now.

Tags I'm aiming for with this novel: City building/Empire building, dream magic, elemental spirit harem, intrigue, diplomatic marriages, military leadership, kinky protagonist.

If you've read Randi Darren's Fostering Faust, it might be something like that, at least for the first book. There will be a bit more emphasis on learning and using magic though, especially as the series goes on.

Also, are Alvin/Aldrich blending together? I usually avoid having two characters with the same first letter in their name since that's what the human brain uses to quickly distinguish names, but for these two specifically I want them to feel related. Is it worth it? Or should I change one of their names?