That night, as I slept, I had one of the most amazing and vivid dreams of my entire life.

In that dream, I was a huge creature with blue fur, making its way through a dense, dry patch of land.

I must have been in the middle of some sort of huge canyon, because when I looked up into the air, I saw enormous walls of dirt far off into the distance, so high up that it seemed impossible to imagine how I would ever climb out of here... or how I had even gotten into here in the first place.

Still, those questions didn’t really matter to the creature that I was in the dream.

All that mattered for him was to take the small, black orb that he was clutching in his left hand, and to get it to somewhere safe.

More specifically…

To carry it inside of one of the ancient, and sacred Vaults.

As I walked through the enormous, oval-shaped canyon, I felt my destination growing closer and closer, until I at last saw it stretched out in front of me along the plain, at the very center of the canyon.

The vault was huge, and it was truly amazing.

And at its front, there was a single enormous metal door, with an engraving of a tall, fruit-covered tree in its center.

Slowly, I held up my hand up to the door, and placed the blue mark on the palm of my right hand up against the metal.

Then, the door slid open, as I stumbled inside.

In the dream, I couldn’t see what was inside of the building. But I could tell that it must have been exquisite, based on the way that I was reacting.

I felt my body stepping through the ancient halls, as I made my way up onto some sort of elevated platform.

And then… I felt something extremely cold pressing against my skin.

After that, the dream came to a sudden and final end.

I was woken up right after that by the soft, warm rays of the early morning sun, which were just beginning to gently stream through the shuttered windows of the little wooden home.

I was awake now of course, and I recognized where I was.

But even still, I felt strangely disconcerted, and confused.

I was in that state that was somewhere between dreaming and waking, where you know at some conscious level that everything that had come before was just a dream, and yet you still can’t stop thinking about it, or believing that it really had taken place somehow.

I could still see that huge, sprawling canyon stretching out in front of me, and I could still feel the cold metal of the vault pressed against my hand.

Of course, at my most “reasonable” level, I knew that those images were almost certainly just of my own creation, and that they probably didn’t signify anything at all.

But…

I still had the strong impression – though I couldn’t have told you exactly why – that everything that I had seen in that dream really had taken place once before, in the distant past.

That impression was so strong that I resolved that, as soon as the children were awake, I would ask them about the canyon that I had dreamed of, and try to figure out if that place that place really did exist in this world. And if I found out that it did, then maybe I would try to head out there someday, and to see what might lay inside. Because even though the dream I’d had almost certainly hadn’t meant anything at all, it was still the best lead that I’d gotten about the location of the vaults – and there was something in me that I couldn’t quite explain which told me that my dream really was significant somehow, and at least worth looking into.

At any rate, that was what I had thought about when I had first gotten out of bed that day. But by the time that I had reached that point in my thoughts, each of the children had woken up, and were rousing themselves out of bed. So, I went over and greeted both of them warmly, as the three of us made our way in towards the kitchen for a meal.

To my surprise, it seemed as if Lily was now placing almost as much weight onto her right leg as she was onto her left, and she was showing just about no signs of her former injury. The only thing that I noticed was a very slight, lingering limp to each of her steps, but you would only really have been able to notice that if you had happened to be looking for it. Otherwise, however, she seemed to be altogether fine, and it was clear that the significant improvement in her condition was a source of great happiness for both her and Aaron.

It would probably still be another day or two until she was able to run or to leap like she had before, but I had no more concerns about her recovery, and it seemed certain that she would be fully back to normal by the end of the week.

For his part, Aaron seemed to be doing quite fine as well, as he stirred the meat and vegetables in the pan, and laughed with Lily at a few jokes that we were all telling. When he had finished cooking, he brought all of our meals over to the table, and started to talk for a little while about some of the adventure books that he had been reading.

Apparently, he and Lily had been reading a loose biography of the exploits of one of the old heroes from the Guild of Knights. It seemed that the tales of bravery and of selfless devotion in that story had managed to set a warm flame in his heart, and it had made him want to speak at some considerable length about each of the amazing things that his hero had accomplished, and the way that he had helped to unite each of the kingdoms of his day, through his brilliant mind and sense of tactics. Listening to him was very charming, and as he spoke, I found it almost impossible to recognize the scared, sad young boy that I had met only a few days before. There was a joy to him now, and a lightness, that must have come from finally being free of his terrible situation, after having almost abandoned all of his youthful hope that he would ever be able to live a normal, and a happy life.

Of course, there was still a bit of a tension in the room, as each of us more or less consciously chose to ignore the question of when or whether the owner of the house might be able to return, or what we would choose to do if he didn’t.

But, under the circumstances, that seemed like quite a reasonable decision. It was still the best course of action to stay here and to wait for now, and so there was no need to worry about the future, or to let our fears poison the sweetness of the present. If and when the time came that we would have to accept that the owner wasn’t coming back, then we could deal with that then. For now, however, it was best just to sit around the table and to enjoy our delicious meal together, as we chatted, and joked, and looked out with eagerness towards the future that was awaiting us.

After Aaron had finished talking about the book that he had read, I figured that it would be as good of a time as any to bring up the dream that I’d had the night before. As I spoke, each of the children listened with a great degree of interest, soaking in the details of my walk through the canyon, and of the sights that I had seen. After I had finished, I asked if either of them had ever heard of a place like that, somewhere out in the wilds of this world.

To my slight surprise, Lily nodded almost at once, and told me that there was a canyon which was quite similar to the place that I had seen in my dream. Apparently, the canyon that Lily knew about was a long ways to the north of the City of the Blue Tower, in a land that was too dangerous for many people to go and to visit. She didn’t remember the name of that canyon exactly, or of the area that it was surrounded by. But the information that she had been able to give me was more than enough for now. So I thanked her for everything that she had told me, and expressed my excitement that I might be able to find out a bit more about the place, and to discover if it was really like the canyon that I had seen in my dream.

Of course, I didn’t tell her why the vault was a matter of such interest to me. But she seemed to find it perfectly reasonable that a person would want to find it, so she didn’t ask any questions that might have compromised my identity. She simply expressed her own excitement in turn, and asked me to let her know about whatever I might happen to find in my searches through the books of the library.

After we had finished our meal together, I went back out into the main room, as the two children started to play with the little toy castle, and the two figures of the knights. I had intended to simply step towards the pile of books, and to see if there was anything that I could find that might be of some use. But, as I was walking towards the bookshelf to grab a few tomes off of the shelf, I noticed something that I had just about completely forgotten about from before – a large globe that was buried in one of the corners of the room, behind a pile of clothes and a few chairs that weren’t currently in use. So, I headed over to move the stuff in front of it out of the way, and I then began to examine the globe in order to see if I could find anything that matched the canyon that I had seen in my dream.

The globe was very “three-dimensional,” for lack of a better word, so things like towers and mountains rose up off of the surface, while canyons and valleys seemed to sink down in towards the center. Going off of what Lily had told me before, I soon found a large canyon some ways to the north of the Blue Tower, that was indeed quite similar to the one from my dream. It was a little different, somehow – a little less of an oval than I had remembered, and smaller too – but I had the impression that the events of the dream had taken place quite a long time ago., so it wouldn’t have been too surprising if the natural formation of the canyon had altered a little bit during the course of that length of time. It was also quite possible that it was precisely that change in the natural formation that had covered up the vault, in some way or another, and that had made it so hard to find - which meant that the difference between the two canyons might actually be a clue, rather than a difficulty.

At any rate, I made a note of the name of the region that surrounded the canyon, and then went to look up a bit about it in one of the many books on the shelves of the library. I didn’t see too much of interest in that book. But, I did find out that most of the monsters in the area around the canyon were around level 90 or so. That meant that if I was going to ever make my way out there, I would want to become considerably stronger first, in order to be able to protect myself.

Still, I found that my urge to head out that way only seemed to be growing stronger the more that I thought about it. And so I made a note to myself that if I ever got strong enough, then I would try to explore out that way, and to see what I might find – and to discover if the canyon out there really was the same as the one that I had seen before in my dreams, and if that ancient vault might be lurking deep within.

After I had finished looking into the canyon that Lily had described, I decided that I would take one more look at the book that I had read before about the legends of the vaults, in order to see what I might be able to find. I had only gotten about a quarter of the way through that book before, the last time that I had looked at it. But now that my mind was filled with excitement about the vaults again, I wanted to search through the rest of that tome in order to try to discover any more clues or hints that might be there. So, after searching through the shelves again for a few moments, I plucked the book out from just near the top, then carried it over to the little wooden chair, where I began to flip through the pages.

I had probably been reading for about twenty minutes, without making out too much of interest one way or the other, when I suddenly saw something that nearly made me drop the book out of my hands.

There, on the page in front of me, was a drawing that could almost have been a photograph of my dream.

In the center of the image was that same beautiful metal vault, with an engraving of a fruit-bearing tree upon the door.

In the background of the image were the edges of the huge, oval-shaped canyon.

And in the bottom-right corner of the image, there was a blue, fur-covered hand, clutching a small, black orb.

I stared at the image in a state of amazement for quite a long period of time after that, as I tried to understand how that sort of a coincidence could be possible.

Then, I flipped to the pages before and after, in order to try to see what more I could discover. But unfortunately, there was no further explanation. The image was just one of the many assorted drawings and sketches that were scattered throughout the book, each of which was merely said to have “some relation” to the vaults.

The only further clue at all was a small description that rested beneath the image.

It read: “The Dream of the Vault in the Canyon.”