The Somnia

[Morus]

Jonathan Grell had never been a particularly good man. The Radasanth native was a known liar, thief, and conman with a violent streak considered commonplace amongst those who signed up for the city's militia. He spent his days sleeping in, weary from long nights of hassling shopkeepers for handouts "for the good of the empire" or harassing the local working girls to "prove their loyalty." The constant reek of sour booze acted as his herald as he proceeded through the streets; and none could compare to his caparison, dressed richly in all his strong-armed gifts. As day would break, he returned to his home and dreamed simple bliss of a man with a dead conscience. Lurid visions of lush and lustful women, gilded honors unwon in their hands, danced each time he let go of the waking world. A comfortable routine for the vile, though fated not to last.

One strange and heavy morning, Grell lay in his bed with a sense of unease. Something troubled the man, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. A few hours before he had broken up a camp of squatters that nested too near the Citadel. His cudgel, still slick with droplets of blood, rested so casually against his earthen walls he couldn't help but smile at the memory. In the dimming flicker of lantern light, in his dark basement room, the calmed and disquieted militiaman began to drift peacefully into the unwaking.

The voided moments that usually led into his sad narratives seemed to stretch on endlessly. The fantastic harem that followed, and courts that hosted them, never appeared. Instead, a long and winding passage surrounded Grell. The only light around came from chalk scrawlings that covered the hall, wall to ceiling.

"Crude depictions of nature from some shallow mind," he mused, though not as eloquently. His mind, in fact, was racing with uncertainty as he took careful steps in what he hoped was the right direction. "I must be dreaming," he hoped as he continued slowly. The eyes of every drawn animal seemed to follow him as illustrated vines crept silently along. Jonathan arced his back to avoid imagined claws that swept at him from on high; their vibrant luminescence blinding to behold up close. The man quickened his pace as fear swelled inside him. His own footsteps felt like a hammer pounding steel, and his ears screamed with every hit. Soon he heard the howls of some terrifying beast far behind him. With each new roar, a warm wind rushed past him.

He began to run, hunched still and with an arm over his tender eyes. His screaming could do nothing to quiet the primal quake that followed at his heels, getting closer and closer by the moment. Just ahead, Grell could smell the sickly sweet field that lay just beyond the path's opening. Golden light shined with such a terrible, cleansing fury, yet still out of reach. The tunnel's exit, where the scrawls ended, was the shimmering salvation Jonathan desperately needed.

His first unsure step into the fresh air was cut tragically short, however.

[Hallow]

The Wizard Hallow was oft found in strange, melodramatic, and schismatic occurrences. They were usually the sort of occurrences he had a choice over, however. If he found himself examining a putrid corpse over his usual bacon sandwich in the morning, then it was because he had decided that was his chosen start to the day. To be found wanting in a strange environment as the wanting environment he was in was, however, was not part of the necromancer’s routine.

“This is…interesting,” he said soothingly. His mind was racing to put all the components of his rude awakening together. He had, just moments ago, been sat upon the borderline of the resurrected district of Iliad in the city of Beinost. Now, he was looking out over the flattest, fullest, and coldest landscape he had ever seen. Rocks would have been grandiose accompaniments to the scene, beautiful, almost, against the radiant gold sky and the astronomically bland salt flat.

“It is more than interesting, Ashley.” Malefor chided, his usually patriarchal tone not missing a beat through the transition. They had started to dine together, for some strange reason, finding solace in one another’s macabre company in the soft hours of dawn. “Did you feel it?” the liche raised an eyebrow, and levitated a few feet ahead of the Wizard. Ashley could only swoon at the thought of the coming condescension. He had barely eaten his breakfast, and an empty stomach was no playground to dance with the devil himself.

“I felt nothing other than the hunger pangs.” He took a deep breath of the otherworldly air. It felt heavy. “Possibly a slight dizziness as I sat down, but then again,” he cocked his wrist mockingly into view, “it was rather a late evening before the sun went down.” The eternally odd at ease routine they both kept, up all night, asleep all day had ceased to be a problem for the wizard to navigate as far as conventional time references were concerned. Malefor nodded in agreement, and that was all that mattered.

“The sassafras breeze is,” Malefor smiled, “interesting even more so.”

Ashley indulged the liche’s flight of fancy for a moment, but even through the thick iron hauberk he wore away from the Tower of Ravens, the scent of ginger, gumbo, and chicory was thick and slick in the environment around them. Something was cooking up a culinary delight in the strange ether. “Do you think we were summoned here?”

Ashley shrugged. He extended his mind’s eye to touch upon the Shadow Brand, and lengthened the abyssal folds until they reached the sandy floor. In its expense he wrapped himself, covering the gold trimmed iron so that only the placid helm remained in view.

“It is nice not to smell death for once,” he grumbled. “It would be nicer if I could smell bacon…” he rustled beneath the shadowy material, peering out across the horizon that engulfed the senses. If he were not mad already, he could easily see himself losing his last tendrils on reality in such a strange otherworld.

“Soon, Ashley, soon, and I dare say it will be all the sweeter.” Malefor, too absconded into madness already to notice he was rambling floated even further away from his pupil. On ethereal wisps of light cyan smoke the liche trailed a finger through the air, clinging to the memory of being able to test the winds. “Something is coming.” He said flatly.

The Wizard Hallow stared through the liche blankly. He turned around, quite slowly, and quite secure in his fortress of shadow, and saw nothing but the infinite and bleak horizon. He saw nothing but nothing, and in seeing nothing, he somehow managed to find everything. There was nothing, all the same.

“What might that be, then?” beneath his helm, he raised a sweaty eyebrow, unable to contain himself behind his much appreciated masque.

“Guests,” the liche said happily.

Ashley pursed his lips at the sudden emergence of something from the absence of anything. A hundred or so feet in front of his master, a large spherical ball appeared. It was a sudden sort of dead weight emergence into the atmosphere that often accompanied deity driven magic. Ashley had learnt enough about the other colleges of the Beinost Academy of Wizards to recognise that much, at least. The taste of marzipan on the tip of his tongue further solidified that assumption.

“Oh dear…” Ashley grumbled.

“Guests of yours, perhaps?” Malefor looked over his shoulder with the sort of curiosity that had gotten living men killed.

Ashley shook his head.

“Darker magic than you or I possess is afoot,” the wizard replied. On cue, the sphere turned into a portcullis of darkness, and connected with the floor. Bricks appeared, no, popped into view around the edge of the absence of light with a chorus of hammer blows. Each one racked the wizard’s senses, a timely knock to the loose screws that rattled around in his skull. “The sort that gets us no pay, a headache, and another corpse in the basement…” there was a longing in the man’s voice that Malefor had long since forgotten how to respond to.

They stared in unison into the tunnel as it became so, and a soft light broke into the shadow at the very centre. Two dimensions became three, and a gathering of two unwilling attendees to a strange game became a crowd. The sound of footsteps, a chorus masquerading as an ominous rattle of toms began to emerge, roll, and dance out of the opening.

[Morus]

"Life is so simple in these woods," mused Morus as he lay his head back to gaze upon the clear and godly sky. Nearly twenty feet from the ground, he lounged on a heavy branch that seemed to sway in sync with his heartbeat. One hand on his chest, rising and falling with each breath he took, the other wrapped limply around a pipe that hung perilously above the ground, the youth languished in the treetops for what seemed like hours. The moon above shone brightly next to the countless twinkling stars, obscured for mere moments by the occasional puff of smoke he labored to create. Wisps of it trailed out from the boy's mouth, lit from above to glow in resplendent contrast to the gray backdrop they evanesced into. The cool night air seemed to warm around him as his thoughts turned to the day's affairs.

He had barely escaped a vengeful vegetable merchant who accused him of stealing near dawn, bolted from a gang of robbers nearly twice his age come noon, and still managed to endure a scathing talking to by a city watchman on the degenerate practice of begging as the sun grew red overhead.

"An eventful day."

In truth, it seemed no more real to him at that moment than a dream. The anger and fear that clung to him like caked-on dirt seemed to dissolve away with each sweet lethargic pull. Worry, trouble, anguish, they were all tucked safely away in some deep recess of his mind. Thinking about such things just didn't feel right.

It took the boy a while to catch on to what was happening around him. As his lazy red eyes shifted sleepily back and forth, a wall of moving white surrounded him in its formless embrace. Diana's moon had vanished from his view, and with it her forests had receded to a veil of endless white. The thick tree limb beneath him felt unfathomably soft as he stood, attempting to gain some semblance of sense on the situation.

"Perhaps I should find a ..." Morus stopped himself mid-thought, grinning from cheek to cheek. Wherever he was, he doubted a doorway would appear at his convenience. The urchin stretched his arms absentmindedly, smashing into the clouded wall with a painful smack. Grimacing, he tore open the vapor curtains with a furious urgency, only to see an unadorned and unsupported door layered against the mist. The boy carefully pushed forward, grabbing gingerly at the tarnished brass handle. His first step in felt the cold touch of a plain marble floor that stretched for miles onward. But not more than five feet away from the entrance, a man knelt against an infinite scenery, plucking fleas carefully off a hedgehog resting on his leg. Though the creature didn't look particularly pleased, it didn't seem to be in any harm. Morus decided it was best to slowly withdraw into the obscured ether where he'd arrived.

As the boy backed up, he bumped into another door that slowly creaked open behind him. He could feel soft carpet underfoot, and hear the most terrible squeak of a metal bed frame; an all too familiar noise he had grown accustomed to taking refuge in a kindly matron's brothel from time to time. But as he turned to apologize for any interruption he caused, he eyes went wide and cold as winter. Atop a satin covered bed, in a room filled with vulgar graffiti on clay walls, two massive earwigs were entangled together. As Morus felt a faint yelp escape his throat, the male proceeded to snap his member clean off as he faced the frightened human. Every inch of the scene filled the boy with disgust; he fled before he could see the miracle of the insect's regeneration. He slammed the door behind with a resounding sound, surprisingly considering how few solid surfaces were around, before racing headfirst into the mist and yet another door.

This one stayed shut at first, much to Morus' chagrin. As he rubbed his calloused hand against a cheek, he blindly fidgeted to find a knob, handle, or lock; whatever was behind this door he resolved to face. When nothing was found, he tried a simple knock. "Hopefully this occupant isn't as ... unseemly." On his third knock, the heavy piece of oak opened to a wondrous view.

Of the ground, some hundred feet below. Morus felt himself flip as he tumbled out of the sky, screaming all along.

[Hallow]

The Wizard Hallow watched the strange man tumble through the doorway, abandoning the sense of expectation that had started to swell in his stomach. With the distinct absence of bacon in his bile, it rumbled and trundled, and casually made him belch silently. The creature before him was terrified, twisted, and dishevelled. Malefor, on cue, cocked his skeletal head and frowned. Apparently, whatever the ancient death lord had expected, this was not it.

“Ermm,” Ashley mouthed, before he slammed his lips shit behind his life mask. The black iron shone in the brief moment of the tunnel’s collapse, and then fell into night and menace as the door sealed with a catastrophic clap of thunder. The gentlemen, already twitching like caterpillar writing between an eagle’s claws, jumped ceremoniously. “Can we help you, good sir?”

“Oh please say yes,” Malefor added, his meagre covering of hair flapping in a trill of ectothermic excitement. The air turned sour for a moment, an edifice to the liche’s power over nature. At the very least, it was a display of his rancid nature. Ashley was by now immune to it, but he had seen strong men and stronger women vomit in its presence. Given the liche was quite invisible to most at first; it had caused considerable trouble for the necromancer’s dwindling reputation.

“What the fuck was that?” the man proclaimed, eyes wide, heart racing, and from what Ashley could deduce, spirit failing. He twitched, gibbered, and darted left and right in a small perfect circle. Given the bleak nothingness of his new environment, no singular direction seemed to offer him sanctuary from his troubles. “Help, for god sake, help!” he flailed his arms.

Ashley blinked.

“Tell him Ashley, please do.” Malefor nodded encouragingly. He floated close to the man and started to circle him slowly. He rested a skeletal digit on his gaunt chin, an academic gesture of contemplation. Ashley shot the liche daggers of contempt, much the same daggers Malefor shot the pallid, undiscovered, and unexplored flesh of a potential new autopsy.

“I am afraid I do not know, my friend.” He used his arcana driven voice to bolster his presence in the other world. “Please, calm down, we are in this together.” He pressed his hands down against the invisible table in front of him, and used the gesture to build on his malefic charisma. The man snapped to stare at the strange creature before him, transfixed by the sudden appearance of another.

“Who are you?” he snapped. “Who the ducks are you?” he frothed at the mouth. On cue, a flock of ducks appeared briefly overhead in a flourish of fire. They quacked thrice, beat their wings in a group of four, and then disappeared into whatever strange world they had is summoned from in a flash.

“I,” Ashley began, jostling with his true name or his Wizard name, “am Hallow.” He did not think a dream should be any less bound by the rules of the College of Beinost than reality. He did not wish his metaphorical soul to be plucked away in any reality.

A gentle breeze rolled in from behind the wizard, and his long black and abyssal cloak fluttered. Malefor, taken with his new victim, floated back to his pupil’s side. He floated to his right, hands folded across his front, and eyes flaring with grey but vibrant light. Despite his blue nature, there was a hue of rainbow and wonder to his form. Ashley had never felt quite so awkward.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Even Malefor blinked, whelped in surprise, and cocked his rickety neck upwards. The stranger dropped to his knees and crossed his hands over his head, surrounding, cowering, and hiding in a singular motion. Ashley licked his lips as a way to settle his thoughts before following his master’s stead and turning his gaze to the opaque and granite coloured sky. The silence was not quite deafening, but it certainly weighed physical on their eardrums. Even Malefor, who had no organs for about three centuries felt pained by the descending speck that fell from on high.

It took several hundred feet, and several more rounds of prolonged and piercing screaming for the shadow to form into something recognisable. Ashley had to squint and blink several times to focus his gaze, just to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him more than they already were. Between the sudden transmutation into the back end of nowhere, the feverish cretin, and the comet child, Ashley abandoned his pleading hunger for bacon and replaced it instead with something more suitable.

“Oh fuck me,” he mumbled, relying on cursing to put across just how confused he was, “sod the bacon. Get me Ambrosia!” he roared, his voice flowing with purple, turquoise, and amber light. He slapped his hands against his thighs disgruntled, and continued to watch, quite transfixed, the small boy fall from wherever it was they had come from.

“I guess a corpse is a corpse, though he does look quite scrawny…” Malefor said softly. The liche seemed far too pleased with himself at the prospect of new test subjects literally falling from the sky.

[Morus]

The sky's grasp was icy cold as Morus plummeted to the ground below. Each foot he fell seemed to widen his eyes; the wind stinging as it rushed by him as the earth below grew larger and more defined. His screams were futile and unheeded, his arms numb from the rapid flailing. The blue around him was quickly becoming the blue above as he fell towards the infinite nothingness below.

"Concentrate." The word would have fallen on deaf ears if it hadn't been thought. Though his mind raced and replayed the picture of his limp, lifeless corpse dashed below, a glimmer of sense soon swelled inside him. The boy's jellied arms found some hidden strength as he stretched them out pointed towards the ground. A moment's hesitation meant certain death; for once, Morus welcomed the impetuousness of youth.

A force surged through him, rallying at his palm to meet the ground inches away, expelling itself in an invisible burst. The boy stopped midair, rebounded a bit, before falling flat on his back. His arm throbbed with pain as he clutched it in comfort. Though unbroken, a cool sweat soaked his entire body. His tattered tunic and shorts seemed plastered to his flesh, his hair clumped in wet collections. As he rose on unsteady knees, a shudder ran up his spine. His blue eyes darted between the two figures in front of him, but some putrid essence of unknown seemed to cloud all around the...

"Nothing, there is nothing here."

Morus, shy and trembling, tried his best to converse with the two men nearby. One on his knees in hysterics, the other clad in shadow. The urchin didn't know if he should speak or retch. "Perhaps both." As he opened his mouth, however, the strangest thing, that minute, occurred. Butterflies by the hundreds poured out of his mouth and swarmed all around those gathered. The tunnel, the sky, they all seemed to vanish, replaced by gilded wooden walls and fine velvet curtains. Eventually, the last one crept from out of the boy's mouth to join its brothers in the painted scenery, completing a theater where nothing was before. No audience sat in the empty, confined boxes, and the orchestral pit seemed eerily quiet. As he walked down an aisle towards the two men, shaking and unsure, he felt the red carpet underfoot change into smooth marble as he reached the front row.

"I'm Morus," is what he would have said, if his voice hadn't left him. Instead, he found himself grimacing and pointing excitedly at his throat in a mute appeal.

[Hallow]

Amateur dramatics were not Hallow’s foray. For each year of all of his life the Wizard Hallow had performed, by all means, but never for an audience. To stand before a velveteen stage here, and now, and by all means today irked the necromancer gravely. The day was becoming increasingly sour, curdling in the after birth of a seriously morose investigation into bowel movements. He blinked several times, as if the rhythm were helping him calm his nerves, before he turned slowly to Malefor and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Really?” he asked.

The liche, too sarcastic to miss a trick nodded with a wry smile. He looked to the boy from the heavens, and traced the pattern of the curtain divide and the rotten mahogany planks laced with pine supports with the sort of expression that came only with wonderment. When the very fabric of this strange, unearthly, and surreal reality began to morph before the necromancer’s venerable eyes he ceased his amazement. His pallid skin stretched over his flexing fingers like thin paper covering brittle bones and bulging veins. Ashley raised an eyebrow, mirroring his mentors ecstatic and rolling sense of confusion.

“Sorry, what was that?” Malefor asked with a questioning tone that seemed to break the tension with a rasp of cold air, trill suspense, and a smattering of youth the liche had not felt since he had died.

Morus objected silently, seemingly chastised by unseen spirits, deities, and damsels in pink. As the marble came to light out of the providence of the thick plush carpet, Ashley began to feel as if he were not just in a dream, but as if he were folding the skeins of magic into a reality he would not wake from. The thought terrified him, but in his inexperience, he did not know how to deal with it. He did not, and Malefor would smile at the prospect, know quite how to resurrect himself from the stupor.

“Are you hurt boy?” he smiled friendly. He pressed his right hand forwards into the thick, sluice like air, as if to offer it to the seemingly injured youth.

“No need to state the obvious,” Malefor quipped.

“Shut up,” Hallow snapped.

“There is no need fo-”

Ashley stepped forwards with heavy footfalls, oblivious about his impact on the other world. His black iron hauberk, a cast iron alibi to ugliness, only served to make his appearance increasingly intimidating as he neared the youth. He forgets, quite quickly, about the boy’s entrance. It was not often that a man fell quite literally from the sky and not only lived to tell the tale, but lived to speak, complain, and fabricate his own silent mimicry. Bacon seemed like a world away from the wizard’s current circumstances. He was beginning to feel increasingly like no amount of white bread, salted butter, and sirloin, smoked hind could ever satisfy the emptiness he was beginning to feel in the pit of his stomach.

Only the youth could wake him from this curious dream now.

“Are you hurt, boy?” he repeated, trying with great care to not come across as condensing. His head was already throbbing with tension as he tried to contemplate the sorts of magic, scenario, and drugs he would have had to experience, test, and endure for this strange world to even remotely begin to make sense. The natural conclusion for the wizard Hallow was to blame Malefor’s strange midnight experiments.

That was it…he thought.

“It’s all an experiment.” He pressed his hands together, and closed the gap between his heavy booted self and the jittery, thespian, and bewildered looking youth.