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Blood and Nightmares II: Waking Moments
Posted: 15 Jul 2008 08:46 AM |
~Part I: Black Tide Rising~
Darkness swallowed the Midor Deep Forest.
It slithered restlessly from shadow to shadow: a living darkness within which all light and sound ceased to exist, a nightmare in a waking world. But this was more than a mere shadow; yet at the same time, it was even less. It was nothing. It was Void.
It was a newborn birthed by hatred, nourished by terror, existing only for that singular purpose that so defines the Syncursed:
To feed.
To devour the living world and leave nothing behind.
* * *
It was the light that pried open his tired eyes from a restless sleep: tantalising, beautiful, like the light of a will-o'-the-wisp that hovers at the edge of sight but at the centre of attention—a beacon of danger; that damnable curiousity.
He followed it
like a sleepwalker: and a feeling of dread and horrible premonition pervaded him
step by agonising step—
So lonely, so sad, so beautiful was the spectral white lady
and so tragic a ghost.
Or perhaps he was the ghost. A ghost of the past invading a future time, for every eye looked straight through him as he followed her, and it had that familiar feeling of
premonition
and
inevitability…
So lonely, so sad, so beautiful. So tragic and so familiar, white as a ghost
—a deathly white ghost, the light from the staff in her hands shimmering and illuminating her fair and familiar face: her kind eyes, her fragile chin, the nervous quirk of her mouth—
and that was when he knew her, recognised her, broke out into a run
step by agonising step
but it was too late.
The nightmare shattered like a broken mirror, its fragments slicing deep and true.
Blanche La Belle: martyred. The Heart of Aristi: captured. Midoran: now and forever triumphant.
And Salt Sower did not know where the nightmare ended and the premonition began.
* * *
It was the roar that dragged him out of his meditative reverie, the cry of some great beast that was neither animal nor demon. Two gargantuan silhouettes momentarily blotted the sky, draconic wings flapping like great sails in the wind as they raced overhead in panic. The colours all around him bled like running paint
and The Mother's life was leaking out of the world, all her colours sliding and leaving behind nothing but an empty canvas, devoid of life—
Someone whispered his name.
Someone with a voice like running water, like the rushing wind, like the creaking of ancient trees, the
voice of his goddess, hoarse, feeble and dying…
He followed it, his dread mounting with each passing step.
The world, as it passed him by, was eerily devoid of all colour and sound.
Farther and farther the whispers beckoned him onward, to a site both sacred and scarred,
drenched with rain that tasted like tears, the sky wearing a funeral shroud made of stormclouds
and the Cavern of Sorrows was no longer shut, The Mother's wards had fallen and the entrance gaped
like an open wound, bleeding with
darkness.
Darkness and death awaited within. The death of the world, the death of all life, the death of hope and
bodies everywhere, drained of all their lifeblood: her dragons, her druids,
and in the midst of it all the white stag, her avatar, engulfed by tendrils of malevolent, living darkness—
—and in one swift movement the darkness engulfed him within its terrible maw—
And thrashing against nothing (more than nothing, less than nothing, the very opposite of existence), Amon snapped free of the grasping clutches of the nightmare.
* * *
It was the commotion outside that woke him: the sounds of cheering and singing, all too rare in these fearful times. Yet even as the clamour registered, he sensed that
there was something wrong, something wrong with the timbre and pitch of the voices outside, something odd and just a little bit off
and so he strode outside and saw—
…He saw…
that he had lost control of his own existence and awoken
in a world both familiar and yet alien, perverted by the passage of time (how many lifetimes had he slept?). All around him shuffled the
dead
awoken from their graves, the former residents of Brandibuck Vale carrying about their lives
like puppets, for everyone is a puppet, even the gods, and the fate you make is not yours, it is made for you, it is beyond all control and an illusion and a lie
and truth stared him in the face and the face was
his own
for he was the Avatar of Eternity.
Death ruled the lands and Death's name was Desthdes.
Death ruled supreme, for Death had slain all the gods.
And he… he had awoken into this world, so like and unlike the one he knew, and he was the last of the living.
Death stared him in the eye. Death's Avatar wore his face, bore his sword, sought to extinguish the last remaining vestige of life to bring about an eternity of waking death
and that last relic was him
and darkness, the final darkness of death closed in on him as his mirror image struck him down and he fell like
a puppet with its strings severed…
With the scream still frozen in his throat, Talion awoke.
* * *
Darkness swallowed the Midor Deep Forest.
It slithered restlessly from shadow to shadow: a living darkness within which all light and sound ceased to exist, a nightmare in a waking world. But this was more than a mere shadow: it blurred the boundary between nightmare and reality, until each bled into each and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Until nightmare became reality…
…And reality became nightmare.
Engorged on fear, that tumultous and living sea of nightmares swelled and spilled out onto the world, a black tide rising beneath the pull of the spectral moon. |
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Related Posts
Posted: 15 Jul 2008 09:18 AM |
((
Some background reading for the morbidly curious:
* Lore: Blood and Nightmares Compilation
* Peregrine
)) |
The subculture of my dreams
Is waiting for me to fall asleep.
I know you're scared—you should be.
I know you're scared. |
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Re: Blood and Nightmares II: Waking Moments
Posted: 22 Jul 2008 01:01 AM |
~ Part II: Interloper ~
It began with the silence: the calm before the proverbial storm.
The typical, orderly hustle and bustle was conspicuously absent from the Midoran stockade on the Great Plains. Words—when they were exchanged at all—were spoken briefly and in hushed tones.
There was a feeling in the air, intangible but undeniably real: that familiar prickle of unease that signals the arrival of the supernatural. The sudden, unexplained chill that runs down one's spine. The darkness that stares back when stared at. The feeling that someone, something, is standing there, right behind you… yet there is no one and nothing there. All the warning signs of an omen about to be fulfilled.
The silent arrival of inevitability.
It was written everywhere, if you had the eyes to see it: in the night sky, empty, black and void. Where were the stars, the moon, the clouds? It was written in the creeping shadows, in living flowing ink that traced patterns in the grass (and why was the grass so still?).
Perhaps they had noticed it. Perhaps they'd seen the portents and shut their eyes to it, like children cowered under the blankets, hoping that the monster under the bed would go away if only they denied its existence. Perhaps they thought that belief was enough. They were, after all, Midorans.
But believing something does not make it real; and refusing to believe something does not make it stop being real.
And as the long night dragged on, the signs became more pronounced, as if the shadows were growing bolder with each passing hour of darkness. The movement out of the corner of one's eye. The shadows that came to life and danced in the feeble firelight. The strange noises that stopped when investigated: whispers in a language both alien and yet eerily, inexplicably familiar.
Little things; things of the imagination, yet enough to put any man on edge—even them. Even the Righteous Swords. Because in spite of their bravado and their show of rigid, unshakable faith, they were still human after all.
They stood no chance when he arrived: stumbling blindly through the living night in a fit of terror, an unwitting vector for that infectious and terrifying darkness. The darkness rode on his fear as one might ride a horse, and it steered him straight towards the camp.
All it required was one man, just one man to snap; to break the glassy silence with a single word, a single scream, and let the nightmare bleed through the cracks of the shattered looking-glass of reality.
The child had opened his eyes…
…but the monster was still there.
* * *
~Intermission: News~
The Great Plains stand empty; the occupation by the Righteous Sword dealt with a brutal ending.
Travellers who pass through The Great Plains may hear disjointed snippets of the tale from Shira or any of the other horsemen of the Nihillan tribes that roam those parts.
In what some may call a strike of irony, the mangled and torn corpses of Righteous Sword knights and Midor infantrymen litter the very grounds where, nearly two years before to the day, they themselves had slaughtered the former Paladin Order.
While most of the occupying army perished in the inexplicable massacre of a single night, some survivors have fled to the White City with shattered minds filled with scenes of horror. None are able to explain how such mighty a force came to such horrific ending so quickly, and so easily.
In the morning following the Righteous Sword massacre, a human mage was encountered in the Midor Farmlands and is believed to have been involved in the earlier event. Midoran forces are on the lookout for this man, who last escaped capture by taking advantage of the general disorientation following the previous night. |
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Re: Blood and Nightmares II: Waking Moments
Posted: 20 Aug 2008 12:43 PM |
~ Part III: Onyx ~
With a satisfying creak the gate to the old stockade pulled open.
It was not the place he remembered.
He moved quickly to the far wall of the stronghold with nary a glance about him as he passed by. Dusk was coming, and with it those things that crawl out of the forest with every night to wallow in agony under the moonlight.
In another time, in another life, they may have been dryads. But as of today, they were Syncursed, now and forever.
Even if they posed no threat, Zacch’s creation had a quality about them that Alistair found more than unsettling; everything from the surreal way in which they moved to the moaning-hissing sound of their voice spoke of tragedy and sadness and despair.
Yes, it was best to leave them to their misery in peace.
Besides, there was something else in that nocturnal darkness that was less tragic and far more malevolent.
* * *
When he first found this place it remained perfectly preserved, abandoned not only by its former Midoran occupants but seemingly by the passage of time itself, but time
He never could piece together what it was about this place that always had him come back, and he has given up trying to find out.
This time, however, his return did not occur on a whim. From Ka’azim to Naillamne and beyond, it was his fascination with the Void that led Alistair on his path. It was that same fascination that cost him an apprentice, and has likely cost the rest of the world much, much more.
It slithered restlessly from shadow to shadow: a living darkness within which all light and sound ceased to exist, a nightmare in a waking world.
But how else could he have come to know what he now knows? Ancient history and arcane knowledge on an unrivaled scale, and there was always so much more to learn.
The living nightmare presented itself as both a threat and an opportunity, as something terrible and something wonderful, and neither of which could be ignored.
* * *
Making his way into a large tent at the end of the encampment and past the twisting branches that tore its inside apart, it was a small comfort for him to know that some things never change.
In spite years of neglect, collecting dust and roaming spiders, the cavern still felt like home.
It was, after all, where everything has started.
He had spent years of research in this place, probing into secrets that no sane man would dare trifle with, uncovering knowledge best left to those who are mad and those who are cursed. It was only appropriate that another such mystery will draw him back.
A lone torchlight at the edge of the chamber suddenly flickered back to life in greeting to its master.
Laying down an exotic collection of plants and herbs on a nearby table, the wizard watched as countless shadows danced hypnotically to the rhythm of the flame.
“Well,” Alistair mused while appraising his sanctuary, “Back to square one.”
* * *
~Intermission: News~
Since the night of Grace’s impromptu departure with a group of adventurers southwards, she has not again been seen at her post in the North Illumine Alliance offices; her current whereabouts are unknown.
There are scattered reports of a female herald occasionally sighted around Brandibuck for a short while before vanishing back into the nearby woods.
* * *
Stories from the south continue to spread, telling tales of a darker and haunted Mirghul; beasts that grow more aggressive and restless, strange noises and that pervade the woodlands, eerie whispers and shadows that move at the edge of sight.
Those who travel beyond Brandibuck at night will experience such terrors for themselves.
Most disturbing are the recent rumors of a nightmarish reality leaking into the waking world: nights which grow darker and longer, figments of imagination taking on substance and form, and that visible within a spectral outline a black moon dominates a starless sky. |
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Re: Blood and Nightmares II: Waking Moments
Posted: 02 Sep 2008 04:05 PM |
~Part V: Nightfall~
It began as an ordinary, quiet evening, rid of the nightmares and the dread that haunted recent nights.
Halflings gathered at the hall for another night of partying; Rangers and Sunbringers patrolled the forest and worked away at the lodge; the sounds of the waking nocturnal wildlife echoed across the wilderness; a calm and peaceful night, as if the troubles of recent months were finally over, that perhaps some hidden group of adventurers have made their final stand against the living darkness and won.
In retrospect, that should have been their first warning.
Not that it would have helped – that anyone could have prepared for what was in moments about to come.
The mist rolled over from the eastern sea, thicker and darker than ever before; with its coming, life and colour bled out of the wilderness, leaving behind a desolate and perverted landscape. Stalking phantoms, dancing shadows, strange movements at the edge of sight: mere figments of imagination stepped out of their dark corners with hateful eyes and brandished claws.
In a single black moment - the split of a second that takes to cross between waking and dream – reality itself warped and twisted into nightmare.
* * *
~Intermission: News~
Southern Vives plunges into darkness.
An impenetrable veil of thick and gloomy mist engulfs the wilderness, from the woods of Midor to the forest of Mirghul and the Great Plains between, blotting out the very sky. It lasts throughout the day and night, and what lies under its cover has been thrown into a fearsome nightmarish existence. Barren and gnarled trees dominate these wastelands, and what little wildlife wanders there appears frightened and aggressive.
Terrified stories even tell of imaginary figments that take form at night: terrible shadows that haunt the dark wilderness.
* * *
The strange affliction that has been sending people into unbreakable comas over the past few weeks has taken a drastic turn. The majority of Brandibuck’s population has been affected overnight, with the inn and boarding house packed with these unconscious sleepers, cared for by those who remain awake.
In spite of their plight, others among Brandibuck’s populace continue with the merriments at the party hall. If asked, they claim that “this is how we did it last time”.
Isolated rumours coming from Paws suggest the same condition has occurred in the small village, and speculation arises as to whether Midor has also been influenced.
* * *
Just before the nightmare took hold, a great fire has been witnessed spreading across woods north of Midor. Further adding to the devastation of the forest is a violent thunderstorm that struck shortly after the fires began, reaching out of Elbereth’s Tears.
When the mist arrived and the transformation took place, both the fires and the thunderstorm had already decimated the Midor Deep Forest. |
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Re: Blood and Nightmares II: Waking Moments
Posted: 26 Oct 2008 07:06 AM |
| ((Bump, for some reason.)) |
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