View Full Version : Thick as Smoke and Cheap as Dreams
Closed to Erikar. Bunnying approved throughout thread.
Much to his dismay, Constantine had begun to adapt to his new life. When he kissed the hideous idol his masters gave him, summoning himself to their realm, he no longer recoiled in disgust at the taste of brine filling his mouth. Where once he retched at the probings of another tongue from some inconceivable place within the talisman, he now meekly accepted its lust. He no longer shivered as he sloughed off his mortal skin and assumed his shape within the Fade. He became desensitized to the defiling of his soul - if indeed he still possessed one. He was not certain.
Even the alien world they called the Fade became dull to his eyes. He grew accustomed to its shifting landscape, to the way landmarks and entire stretches of its vastness seemed to shift with the fickle temperament of a living thing. It would not surprise him to find out that this was the case, however; to discover that all this time he merely tread through the inner passageways carved out from the body of some unholy leviathan.
He saw so many horrors in that dark place beyond the stars that they no longer gave him pause. The first time he walked in the Fade, it looked much like the countryside he frolicked through as a boy on excursions outside of Radasanth. Haunted and destroyed, to be sure. The drifts of autumn leaves on the highway lay as thick as the dead in its single desolate city. The weed-choked fields had gone unharvested, and the long-dead cattle lay skeletal and hollow-eyed in empty pastures.
A great plague had swept this realm free of its inhabitants. That much was clear, but little else. Abandoning the countryside in favor of the town, he was horrified by the piles of dead choking its thoroughfares and drowning its alleyways. What few spectral residents remained treated this danse macabre with as little gravity as Constantine might treat a child romping in the streets of Radasanth.
And the guide. The being who waited for him at the end of that long road, the smiling abomination that was the voice of all its brothers. The only truly animate entity he had come across since arriving in the Fade. Yet starkly immune to reason: to Nepharen-Ka, the creature’s name as he would later come to know, this was the only reality that had ever been or could be. It was all perfectly normal, after all, and why would he worry? He was well cared for.
That was how his nightmare had begun. Fresh from death, Constantine had not quite made it to heaven, or hell. Instead of any afterlife, fate delivered him into the hands of these monstrosities. They charged him with spreading their faith in return for his mortality and a boon of their borrowed power. Constantine, sick with fear, craven and weak and eager to wake up from this dreaded terror and return to his real life, had accepted.
But when he awoke, the dream had yet to end. The daybreak of his manhood ended, and the long twilight of his unlife began.
His masters called him to the Fade, occasionally. Whether it was to check on his progress or because his obvious apprehension offered them some cruel amusement, he could not know. He noted calmly that the world had once more changed its shape. Rather than the medieval arrangement from before, he dragged his feet through warm billowing sand and empty streets lined by domed temples and secluded bazaars. In the distance a gargantuan spire reached up like the finger of some scorned god to brush the sky.
Though Constantine felt a distant tug at the grandeur of all these things, they were mute to him now. Dumb. He could not care, though he was curious if the original design of the Fade had been engineered to enrapture him with its closeness to his own reality. If so the ploy had worked brilliantly, cloying Constantine into a false sense of security, cruelly shattered by the reality of his predicament. He did not bother asking Nepharen-Ka whether his suspicions were true. The being responded to his queries only with more riddles and further deception.
Slowly, the squat, clustered structures began to thin out. Processional avenues bled into thoroughfares which trickled out into side streets. His trek carried him through to the city ouskirts. All throughout his long trek, the spire never grew any closer or farther away, hanging at a fixed distance. He passed neighborhoods of lavish estates, crossed through slums where he should have found the bottom-most dregs of society but instead discovered only more emptiness.
Finally, he reached his destination. Behind him the city glimmered like a mirage, and before him lay a vast and limitless expanse of desert, stretching far off into the horizon. A vague speck appeared near the place where his vision failed him, growing larger at a rate incongruous with the object’s real speed. Eventually he could distinguish features, knowing at once that it was Nepharen-Ka who approached, and who had summoned him.
The old god had assumed yet another shape for their meeting. It wore soiled bandages, playing the part of a mummified pharaoh all covered in rotting rags, freshly exhumed from its tomb. It plucked idly at itself, as if entertained with its own destroyed body. Its features were inscrutable, save for the obsidian eyes which stared hard into its servant’s soul. Though Constantine could not see the rest of his master’s face, he had no doubt that Nepharen-Ka was smiling.
“Welcome, child,” it greeted its thrall musically as it came within earshot. “You’ve done so very well, yes. Every day our hosts grows fatter on the sweet meat of your kind’s belief. Worry not. All the faithful shall be rewarded, in due time.”
Something about Nepharen-Ka’s tone made Constantine shudder.
“Why have you brought me here today?” Constantine asked, leaving no time for the half-dead god to harry him with its games.
Nepharen-Ka made an idle sweeping gesture as if to encompass all of the distant horizon. For just an instant Constantine glimpsed the faintest suggestion of ethereal shapes in the air around his master. A hundred thrashing tentacles mimicked its every movement, giving the vaguest impression of a much vaster body. A giant beast wearing that frail human shell as a mask.
“Perhaps I have summoned you here to kill you.”
Constantine could detect no malice in the creature’s glee-filled voice, but he didn’t doubt the statement’s sincerity. He had struggled to understand these monsters, but their psychology was a total mystery to him. Maybe he really had been brought here to be killed on a whim.
“Perhaps I have demanded your presence in order to make you a god, or a hero. To set you free. Or perhaps I have an undertaking for you.”
With a start, Constantine realized how afraid he was of Nepharen-Ka. His hand had lingered near the pommel of his sword since he’d arrived, practically. He could smell the reek of his own fear. Sweat covered his brow in a slick sheen. To this monstrosity there was no present, only an immeasurable past and a long future ahead; the here and now was merely a fulcrum upon which these two things balanced, and which it manipulated to best serve its purposes.
Nepharen-Ka acted as the voice of these old spirits, and their envoy to the earth below when their emissaries did not suffice. In his mind Constantine held images of the great deceiver whispering blasphemies in the ears of kings, seducing sorcerers with his promises. He asked himself continually just how much of history began in the mouth of this skinshifting demon. He wondered how many countless nations had been put to the sword, cleansed by fire, all because of the devil’s soft voice and gentle words. A hundred apocalypses rested behind that calm, knowing smile.
That was what filled him with fear. To these beings lives such as his were no more than pieces in their game, to be bartered with and sacrificed wherever necessary.
“What,” Constantine began, voice hoarse, “is my assignment?”
“It is important to be prepared, for life is long and there is always an opportunity for any resource to become useful. We must collect… the vague possibilities.” Nepharen-Ka spoke Common with the slightest accent, but occasionally it could not express itself, as if its thoughts could not always be translated so readily into a tongue comprehensible to mortal minds.
“Yes. We must seek out the friends who might or could have been, so that when the time comes, our strengths shall merge like the waters of many tributaries flowing into one almighty river. Two more eyes and hands, to see and work our ways upon the waking world. You understand this.”
Constantine nodded, though he was not sure he did.
“Exquisite. One such fruit is ripe for plucking. You will go now into its dreams and introduce it to our ways. Present it with a choice: to nourish the Fade, or to become its nourishment. The same choice presented to you, if you would recall.”
“How will I do this?” Constantine asked, controlling his voice enough not to stammer. His dread threatened to suffocate him. But Nepharen-Ka did not answer - beneath its rags, its body had begun to quiver and writhe. It began to shrink, receding eel-like into its wrappings. Its limbs deflated, its torso began to waste away in fast-forward decomposition. A terrible buzzing noise filled the air, drowning out all else, a deafening drone that eclipsed Constantine's very thoughts.
Constantine turned and retched into the sand as he realized what was happening. Through the holes where the trickster god’s eyes had been poured flies, innumerable flies, a vast swarm of pestilence that grew into a screaming cloud of plague. The host ascended rapidly into the air, spreading out to blanket the sky. Darkness fell rapidly on the desert as the sun’s last dwindling rays were choked out, and an unprecedented chill crept into Constantine’s body.
The buzzing noise of the flies began to shift in his mind, segueing into another sound entirely. He looked up and rather than a featureless black abyss yawning above, he could distinguish the bruised contours of stormclouds. The drone died away entirely, swept into a distant peal of thunder. He realized for the first time that the cold seeping into his bones was caused by the sheets of icy rain that fell upon him. He no longer stood atop the desert but on the tiled rooftops of a city all too familiar to him.
He had returned home to Radasanth. All his memories of the place were wan and colorless in the face of his death and the knowledge that his previous life had ended. So he stood there, considering with surgical detachment his memories, trying to piece together precisely where he was in the urban sprawl. He waited for some indication of his mission to appear, so he might leave this awful reminder of what he had become in favor of some dark, moist place to hide within.
Erikar tossed and turned in his bed, deep within Blackmist Hollows. A recurring dream played through his subconscious. As usual, his thoughts drifted unbidden to his childhood. The flashbacks had been worse since he had murdered Ja'al Thasbuyl and his gang, weaving their way into his waking and sleeping mind. The recollection always played out so unusually. The setting was always Radasanth, the home of his childhood. He ran and ran, but could never reach his mysterious goal.
----------------------------------
The torrential downpour felt like a swarm of hornets, stinging indiscriminately and without mercy. Lightning illuminated the rooftops of Radasanth for a split-second before giving way to furious peals of thunder. Erikar ran unerringly over the slick tiles, pumping his legs wildly. The air around him seemed thicker than blood. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't seem to get any closer to his destination. He pushed with all his might against the irresistible, invisible current. He could almost believe that it was the hand of the gods themselves, preventing his success. But it was only his own mind, at war with its morals and beliefs. The path stretched ever onward.
His subconscious took notice an anomaly while he struggled, an uninvited outsider to this sacred realm. Erikar turned as if underwater, slow and deliberate. The cold had disappeared, replaced by the heat of adrenaline as his mind altered the world he inhabited. Ceaseless, the biting rain continued to pour. The being acknowledged him in return through his immediate eye contact. Erikar frowned, puzzled. The hallucination of his ego had never played out like this before. He had never seen the pale man before in his life.
"Who are you?" Erikar inquired angrily.
The strange entity replied with no words, yet. He only stared, his eyes full of sadness and self-loathing. The denizens of Erikar's fabricated world abandoned their gauntlet through the streets, turning to gaze at Erikar as one. Their eyes held no color, only a blank void, emotionless and frightening.
"What do you want with me?!" The newly initiated assassin demanded. A chill of fear crept down his spine as his fabricated world began to change of its own accord.
Life contained substance dreams could never hope to attain… little victories and small defeats, all bundled up in a cracked package incomparable to any fragile nighttime fiction. Erikar’s dream was thus: though Constantine recognized Radasanth in the great sweeping brushstrokes of its familiar streets and the oily paintspills of its most legendary landmarks, the city was woefully incomplete. Vast chasms of incongruous darkness yawned from the ends of sidewalks into other districts of the empty metropolis.
Everything unfamiliar to Erikar himself was suspiciously absent. Even that which the boy had conjured from the deep recesses of his mind wavered like heat haze, as if it were all a reflection in a well of black water. At any moment, the frail image held there might collapse, disturbed by the strange creatures which lurked beneath, watching with hungry eyes. Constantine wondered if the boy himself knew this, or if he still lingered on the edge of consciousness, not quite realizing where he was.
Boy, he thought again, and realized that Erikar was probably near his own age. His burdens felt suddenly heavier across his shoulders. A weight of years had settled on his features like a layer of clinging dust. Constantine was decidedly changed from the ordeal of dying. Though his body did not rot, his soul did, more and more with each day he was denied passage into heaven.
Constantine stood atop the rooftops, his stance easy and relaxed, hair soaked and pressed against his brow by the rain. The storm carried Erikar’s words away on the wind and drowned them out on the scream of thunder, but Constantine understood. He approached, moving effortlessly through the same space Erikar had struggled through, until he stood a few arms’ length from his quarry.
“Who am I?” he parroted, his expression unchanged. Though hatred smoldered in the ashes of his gray eyes, they brooked no weakness. He scrutinized his prey, watching every minute motion his body made, reading carefully the lines of his face to see what hid there. Shock. Anger. The barest thread of fear, and seeing it, Constantine reached out to strum it like the chord of a harp. The shadows deepened, the stormclouds became a shade darker. Throughout the streets, the onlookers began to stir, then to settle. As if the ruffled feather had been smoothed back down and the clockwork machinery of the dream advanced as it always had.
As if the interloper had been accepted as a part of reality. A new addition to Erikar’s secret world, a taint rooted deeper than cancer.
“Who do you think I am? What do I seem to be? Perhaps I am a part of your dream. Perhaps I am a part of something far greater.”
A grimace flickered briefly across his face. I sound like that wretched abomination from the Fade. What am I doing, playing games with this child?
A voice that was his own and not his own echoed back across the debate floor of his conscience, You play because you must. How else will you plant the seed in the boy’s mind? Play his game. Learn his rules. Master him.
“What could I possibly want to take from you in a dream?” Constantine scorned, lips pulling back in a tight sneer. “Not your wealth. Not your life.” He softened his voice, quieted his words until even so close they were almost inaudible. “Ask yourself those questions. Who are you? What do you want? Perhaps…”
He glanced around conspiratorially, as if sharing a secret. “Perhaps I’ve come in search of those answers, and nothing more.”
“What could I possibly want to take from you in a dream?”
The strange man's questions echoed through Erikar's subconscious. 'A dream?! He thought incredulously. The fledgling assassin's dreams never included unknown faces, and this man certainly didn't look familiar. However, as he re-assessed the environment, Erikar noticed that this world was anything but real. Darkness enveloped either end of the street they occupied, and the air itself shimmered with an eldritch quality. The city-goers, who's faces Erikar had seen in his travels, were now absent. Acceptance of this unusual revelation granted him lucidity. A scowl darkened the youth's features as he once again focused on the interloper.
"It would seem you are correct. I haven't visited Radasanth in months. I must still be asleep in my new home. This makes you an intruder, nothing more. I wish I could believe you are nothing but a figment of my imagination, but you still stand in front of me, so that's obviously not the case. Now, I'll ask you one more time, and I expect a real answer. No more of your ominous evasions."
The world shifted once more. Radasanth disappeared, replaced by a dark void. Erikar, who previously stood high above the newcomer, now faced him on the same level. A smile split his features. His new-found power over this fabricated realm delighted the assassin. 'I could have some fun with this.'
"Who are you, and why do you intrude upon my memories? Do you want information? If that's the case, I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed." Erikar sneered. He would never divulge his new master's secrets.
In an attempt to test his control over the dream-world, he tried to will a new environment into existence. Satisfaction filled the young man as the dunes of Fallien appeared under the duo. The world shifted again in accordance with his wishes. The trees of Concordia towered high above them them, peat replacing the sand underfoot. Then, once more, their surroundings altered before their eyes. They now stood in the middle of an Alerarian scrapyard, encircled by rusting metal.
A new emotion coiled around Constantine’s heart. It was a serpent, fattened on the flesh of his fear. Now, it thrashed furiously in his chest, beat its rattling tail against his heart. Impudent thing, he thought, watching the roguish boy play with his power. Erikar casually swept a hand and apocalypse came to his dream of Radasanth. Where before the city’s flowing streets were interrupted by portals into the dark abyss below, now all its buildings crumbled into the crevasse like morsels into an opening maw underfoot.
His cold eyes betrayed nothing. They merely watched, glimmering with something like amusement. Or hunger. He found his curiosity piqued by this infant creature, yet untempered by the ways of the world. He felt his heartstrings plucked at by that wild, childlike enthusiasm, felt the heat of emotions he’d thought lost begin to stir in the cold crevice of his chest.
Yes. He craved this boy’s destruction. Delighted in the image of his undoing. All that beautiful naivety, crushed so definitively beneath his heel. As his had been.
Yes...
The incessant drumming of the rain segued seamlessly into the hungry cries of vultures circling overhead. They smelled death on Constantine, but also other fragrances: the pungence of myrrh in the magic driving his corpse onward; the tang of hot iron or blood clinging to him like filth. Such gifts from his masters kept scavengers far away.
Even as he grasped at his own ruthless revelation, he felt it smothered by self-disgust and another, less willing epiphany. Like a cursed idol whose head he glimpsed, rising above the muck and shit of lesser thoughts. A terrible reality he wished desperately to ignore but which drew him in as fire seduces moths to self-immolation.
I am becoming more like them, he thought, and the impact of it made him sick. The ground reeled. The dizzying heat of Fallien faded into cool shade, into half-dark penetrated by lances of light spearing through the woven canopy of branches above them. Concordia. His nostrils filled with the smell of earth and rotting leaves. He felt choked by the air here, the air of the place where he had died, where his bones should lay mouldering. Instead they stood and walked, drawn on by the tug of unseen fingers on invisible strings. Sometimes, though his thoughts were his own, he felt as if his human mind had been replaced, substituted while he slept with a beast which regurgitated the notions and ideas he passed off as his own.
Drawn back from his reverie, Constantine’s eyes focused on Erikar. A boy his own age, but free from the shackles that bound him. His expression twisted into a grimace as he considered the implications of this fact, gleaming hard and bone-like amidst the disheveled wreckage of his other thoughts. Was it hatred he felt? Or jealousy? One begat the other. Unbeknownst to him, he did not keep these new emotions to himself. They flowed from him like water from a sieve, polluting the purity of the dream around them, lines of corruption spiderwebbing across the canopy of trees like cracks in glass. Thick plumes of smoke seethed through the fractures, a roiling smog that spread out to swallow the sky. Around them the trees degraded into shapeless mountains, which slowly resolved into sharp-edged piles of metal detritus.
The featureless black above them transmuted itself into other shapes. Petals the color of bruises covered it like a vast garden of pain, and these slid slowly open. In the spaces left behind, stars peered back at them from across the inky void, arranging themselves slowly into patterns which suggested meaning. Like the eyes of the universe itself looking down on them. The shadows of scrap mountains writhed like living things, becoming nests of snakes which struggled against one another in their quest to devour each other and be devoured in turn.
Alerar was gone. In its wake it left the Fade.
“What arrogance!” Constantine spat. “To claim those images as yours! Places you’ve shared with a hundred thousand others! Which you covet like a tyrant throwing himself over his treasures. Treasures forged by others, owned by others.”
They were not alone. The expressionless creatures from Erikar’s nightmare of Radasanth crawled from the fog, peering out from behind sheets of corrugated metal. They walked towards them from out of the perimeter of the great darkness, their faces mute masks that failed to communicate any real emotion. Amateur thespians aping at humanity. Spurred by their new audience, Constantine advanced towards Erikar yet again. With each step, the yellowing grass beneath his feet crunched like so many brittle little bones.
“What have you done to deserve any truths? To call me an intruder? Now… Now you’re in a place where lives like ours are the intrusions. Fleas on a dog’s arse. Worms in its heart.”
Without warning an arm snapped out, closed fist taking Erikar in the jaw. He staggered back, shocked by the sudden blow. Constantine ignored the ache in his knuckles and struck again, this time an open-handed slap that rattled his adversary’s teeth. Constantine retreated then, taking a few steps back, his fingers dropping to curl around the hilt of his sword. His expression darkened as he realized what he had just done, shocked that his emotions had ruled him so, albeit only for a moment. More than that he didn’t understand what fueled his anger. Erikar meant nothing to him. His accusations amounted to little more than the words of a being about to become a chattel slave, as far as Constantine cared to see it.
As it dawned on Erikar that his dream had taken an abrupt and sinister turn, however, a look akin to awe made its way onto the young man’s face. He looked around in confusion. The slow trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth was forgotten as he muttered, “Where the hell have you brought me?”
Constantine couldn’t help but stare at him in mock pity. “I’m afraid we missed Hell a few doors down. This is the Fade.”
Anger replaced confusion in the emerald eyes of the youth. Scowling at the stranger, the red-headed assassin wiped the all too real blood from his face. The intruder’s blows had stung fiercely. This dream had quickly transformed into a nightmare. The scrapyard was tainted by inky stains spreading their corruption throughout the world. The earlier denizens of his dream, now altered by the foreign entity, surrounded them.
“What the fuck are you?..” Erikar snarled.
The Hand of the Order’s weapons appeared on him from nothingness, his sword occupying its rightful spot on his back. His newest weapon, a ring of knives (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?26800-New-tools-for-a-new-profession), came easily to his open hand. Erikar would try to end this night terror swiftly. He harbored no desire to die in his sleep, prey to this vengeful spectre.
Erikar didn’t wait for the abomination to answer his question. The expressionless masses watched while he pulled himself towards a large beam of metal buried in one of the scrap piles. Standing atop the rusting pile, the young assassin flung his knife-ring at the man, hoping to score a direct hit. The blades whistled softly as they flew, aiming straight for the intruder's chest.
Erikar’s sword rasped as it was drawn from its sheath. Before his projectile had even had a chance to reach it’s target, he pushed off the metal beneath him. The fledgling assassin would attempt to cleave the man’s head from his shoulders. He soared towards the man like a bird of prey closing in on its next meal. He would escape this nightmare world, "the Fade", and its ominous harbinger's grasp. The youth would never allow his journey to end so abruptly, without even a worthy death. He would not die until all of Althanas knew his name.
2 out of 5 pushes/pulls used, that number will recharge in 5 posts.
Sorry about the wait.
“I am a prophecy of flesh, a portent of your future. We have walked the same path.”
Constantine did not move as Erikar went about his theatrics. Instead, he made an idle gesture towards the slack-jawed masses milling around the edge of the scrapyard. Abruptly, they rushed for him, their arms flailing wildly behind them as they flanked their new master. When Erikar tossed his chakram towards them they threw themselves into its path, burying the blades in their bodies, entangling their limbs amongst the knives to protect Constantine from their razor edge.
“I offer you power in this place. I offer you a seat amongst its champions.”
It was clear that the assassin had not yet been steeled by real experience. The overwhelming excess resounded in each of his movements, echoed in the showmanship behind every wasted display of strength. He wanted his legend to spread until Althanas itself burned like embers in its blaze? A quaint fantasy, to be sure, and one Constantine had long shared…
Shared, until a flash of steel nipped his throat open and left him bleeding out into the mud of Concordia’s great forest. Erikar brought back familiar and not-so-fond memories of those final, agonizing moments… and of his return to life in undeath.
At the last possible second, Constantine spun away from Erikar, avoiding the foolhardy attempt at cleaving his neck from his shoulders. In one smooth, brisk gesture, he unsheathed his blade and brought it up so that as Erikar sailed past he would taste the bite of cold iron. However, even should the counterattack meet its mark and a lethal wound be dealt, the young assassin would find himself brutally aware of his surroundings.
“This is the Fade… I have been sent as the voice of its masters, to tell you that will become its servant, as I have. You will help to slake its hunger, or you will feed it yourself.”
Long since having grown accustomed to the unexpected, Constantine assumed a dueling stance. He watched Erikar, wary of what tricks the boy might have up his sleeve. Overhead the sky rumbled and rolled, lightning crackling to life amidst the brewing storm. In the distance the fields resounded with pounding hooves, as if to mark the approach of some new player of this heinous game.
The assassin's attempts to injure the interloper failed miserably. His bladed ring lost itself in a forest of limbs and torsos, wreaking havoc where it hit. But it mattered little. More of the grim wretches swarmed around the intruder, taking the places of their damaged brethren. Erikar's aerial attack was foiled by a skillful dodge at the last second. The creature spun and drew his sword, too fast for the assassin's eyes to follow. Reacting instinctively, a slight push off his adversary's blade altered his trajectory enough to prevent a mortal blow. However, the blade still drew a line of fire across the top of the youth's left shoulder, slicing easily through his linen tunic. The burning pain increased when Erikar hit the ground. Rolling with the momentum of his fall, he quickly recovered to a standing position. The blood from his injury spread under his shirt, dying the linen dark red. The crimson-haired dreamer and the tainted intruder stood alone in a ring, encircled by the denizens of the Fade.
"I want no place among your 'champions,' creature. My master already offers me power greater than any you've shown." Erikar answered haughtily. Assuming his own dueling stance, the point of his blade hanging close to the ground, he advanced on the monster. They met with a clash of iron, sparks flying between them. The fledgling assassin pressed the offensive, his blade eagerly seeking an opening in the man's iron armor. His brows knitted above emerald eyes. He wanted to end this quickly, before the pain in his shoulder became too detrimental for him to fight. Every swing of his blade was matched by an experienced parry from the dark-haired stranger. The haunting visages of the Fade's inhabitants looked on blankly as they fought, awaiting an order from their solemn commander.
Erikar began to tire from the weight of his sword, his swings becoming sluggish and predictable. The young killer suddenly found himself hard-pressed to defend himself as the intruder began to retaliate in earnest. His blows came swiftly, each one expertly placed. The attacks at Erikar's vital organs were just barely deflected every time. The stranger seemed to draw on an endless reserve of stamina, his swings never changing pace. It seemed as though the creature was toying with him, tiring Erikar out before he grew bored with this farce. The searing pain in the youth's shoulder intensified as he fought for his life, the wound oozing scarlet liquid with every movement.
2.5 out of 5 strong pushes/pulls used, that number will recharge in 3 posts.
Constantine's dueling style was not one of infinite stamina but one of great patience. He knew how to move and where, without wasting more strength than was absolutely necessary. He focused more on control than aggression, uninterested in quickly tearing through his enemies' defenses at the risk of leaving himself open to counterattack. He deflected Erikar's strikes and jabs with the mechanical grace of Alerar's steam-powered machines. The boy's silk garment settled into a deep scarlet near his wound. It would only be a matter of time before pain dulled his reactions, slowed him to a crawl. Sweat beaded the boy's brow. To match the dichotomy of Erikar's laborious breathing, Constantine's own remained slow and steady.
Eyes began to resolve in the nebulous mists surrounding their battleground, like spots on an animal. Thin, thrashing shapes danced around at the edge of Constantine's vision. For his sake as much as Erikar's he hoped his masters and their pets would not interfere; a man deserved to fight another man on human terms, he believed.
“You haven’t seen power, to know its shape. Thankfully for you, however, this reverie will soon draw to its conclusion.”
Erikar swung his sword once again, this time a quick overhead strike aiming to cleave into Constantine's shoulder. He caught it on his own blade, confident in his own strength now that Erikar's face was pale from exhaustion. Constantine's eyes began to glow, radiating pale light. Where his gaze swept across Erikar's body it brought great shivering cold. He disengaged from the boy with a shriek of metal on metal, assuming his stance again just an armswidth away. His spell came into effect then, the air displacing to accommodate two new tangible shapes. The tendrils shimmered with unholy energy that crackled as they were born from the roiling madness that made up the Fade, darting in past Erikar's guard as Constantine broke away from their locked blades. They aimed to wrap themselves around the would-be assassin's neck and choke the life from him, bringing him to the edge of awakening.
“Ask yourself this one question when you return to the waking world, my friend.” All the anger was gone from his voice. His frustration from before had subsided - after all, how would he have acted were he to find himself in a lucid dream, if his sleep had not been poisoned since falling into Nepharen-Ka's hands? “Banish this place from your thoughts like a nightmare, make it so that I never existed if you must… but ask yourself, honestly. What is the power of a dream?”
Erikar's desperation-fueled attack failed, easily foiled by the invader's skilled block. Their blades locked with a sharp clang. With their swords in a bind, neither duelist was able to gain significant leverage to overpower the other. The crimson-haired assassin bared his teeth, his exertion showing in his movements. He ignored his adversary's taunts, fighting to maintain his grip on the hilt of his sword. The worn leather had grown slick with sweat from the battle, proving almost as much of a problem as the strange entity Erikar now faced.
The intruder swept his venomous gaze across the emerald-eyed youth's straining body. Wherever he looked, icy cold invaded the marrow of Erikar's bones. He shivered, his sword giving way to the stranger's ever so slightly. His struggling defense was failing quickly. The fledgling assassin wouldn't last in this battle of strength much longer.
A feeling of relief swept through the pale youth as his opponent disengaged from the bind. However, the sense of reassurance faded almost instantly, replaced by fear as the evil entity assumed his dueling stance once more. Crackling energy, purely dark in nature, warned Erikar of an incoming attack.
Nothing could have prepared the young assassin for what occurred next. Two writhing tendrils, inky black in color and cloaked by the dark energy, appeared in front of the ginger youth. They darted for his throat before he could react, the chill that had settled deep within Erikar slowing his movements. One gained purchase, the unholy feeler wrapping around his throat, prepared to constrict like a deadly boa. The other clamped around his chest, squeezing the air out of the organic bellows in his chest.
Green eyes glowed brightly above the corrupted tendrils while Erikar's enemy once again asked him what seemed to be his favorite question. It resounded through his head, carrying an eldritch weight with it that clouded his thoughts and dimmed his vision. Although, the last effect was probably a combined effect of the words and lack of breath.
"What is the power of a dream?What is the power of a dream? What is the power of a dream?"
Erikar's chakram came whizzing out of the mass of bodies behind his tainted foe, pulled by unnatural electromagnetic attraction. His hopes that it would injure his adversary were quickly crushed as the foreign entity dodged away with a perfectly measured movement. The multiple blades of the assassin's knife-ring came flying at his own face, now acting solely on inertia. His eyes glowed a luminescent green once again as he pushed the chakram slightly, diverting its trajectory away from his face and slicing cleanly through the tentacle coiled around his throat. The darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision faded a bit as the pressure on his airways decreased. The exotic weapon swung around Erikar in an elliptical orbit, pulled once again by the orphan. It whistled through the air behind Erikar before it struck the second tendril at its base. The oily blackness of the unholy appendage parted cleanly. His chakram flew on past its target to bury itself, blades first, in the dirt by a nearby scrap pile.
The crimson-haired youth gasped with the release of his body, drinking in the tainted air of the Fade. He resumed his stance, the point of his nicked iron blade close to the ground, glaring at the entity that threatened his life. The sound of his panting drowned out the shuffling of the numerous monsters' feet while he awaited his enemy's next attack.
5 out of 5 strong pushes/pulls used, 1 post until that number recharges.
The effort of his spellweaving was clear upon Constantine's face. He winced as Erikar's strange weapon split his unearthly appendage, the two halves writhing in the air before dissipating. Its twin met much the same fate moments later, and Constantine's impassive expression tightened as if he felt pain from his phantom limbs. His blade dropped to scribe a circle in the dirt at his feet. His other hand rose shakily to brush a lock of dark hair behind one ear, and he regarded the youth with eyes glazed over. His role in their combat had already run its course, however. He felt it in the movements of the Fade, which had become a second heartbeat to him. He heard it in the whisper of the idol hanging from his neck, its voice like the ocean whispers in a seashell in his ear. Constantine's lips parted as if to deliver one final admonishment to Erikar, but closed noiselessly.
Better he learn for himself the power of a dream.
He turned his back to the fledgling initiate, perhaps a little carelessly. Without further ceremony he walked away, dragging the edge of his blade behind him in the sand. His gait was one of infinite weariness. He could have stayed, have continued parlaying with the sleeping warrior, trading barbs and insults and failing to convince him of his philosophy. Once he had asked his question, however, his jurisdiction over Erikar's fate was handed over to someone with far greater capacity for cruelty, and far greater capacity to execute it. The gray-eyed man disappeared into the intangible shadows that marked the edge of Erikar's dream, skin prickling as he felt the gaze of a hundred beasts which defied description roll over his body, regarding him like the small morsel he was to their monstrous appetite. Perhaps this confused Erikar, after so much chaos during their encounter.
Somehow, he suspected he had not seen the last of Erikar Aodhfionn. Tonight a seed had been planted in the fertile soil of his young mind. What kind of flower it would grow into he could not be sure, only that many would be pricked by its thorns.
The resounding of hooves had ceased. All that remained was an uneasy silence, broken only by the restless shuffling of the ghostly apparitions which closed on the assassin. They looked every bit like displaced Radasanthians: a girl holding her mother's hand, a blacksmith whose hammer hung from a satchel on his waist. Urchins lurched forward to claw at his robes as they would in real life, only in Erikar's dream they did not accost him for coins but for some greater price. One by one the mindless things approached and threw themselves upon him, wrestling him to the floor, their nails raking his flesh and probing for his mouth and eyes with childlike curiosity. Abruptly, what could nearly passed for innocent groping reached a new level of violence. The ghosts balled their fists, pounding on the young man's body as if trying to break it apart through sheer strength. His weapons, exotic and otherwise, cut a few down but there were always more to fill their place.
Bruises and cuts transformed into fractures and ugly gashes across his body, and all the while they held him back, rendering him defenseless against their primitive lynching. Their eyes beseeched him as a beggar's do a king's, hungry for one thing and one thing alone: an answer - or perhaps, an admission - to the question Constantine had left behind, hanging in the air like the smell of rust in the scrapyard.
Had he learned his lesson? Did he understand the power of a dream?
The horde of altered abominations swarmed over him, hungry for his destruction. Erikar gave his all in a futile bid at resistance, swinging his bastard sword with reckless abandon. He cut down one, then another, but wherever his blade felled one, another expressionless face took its place. The injury to his shoulder began to take its toll once again, and the crimson-haired assassin's swings started to slow
The masses gripped his arms first, immobilizing them with unreal strength. Then, as if possessing a hive mind, they pinned him to the desecrated ground. Their pale appendages skittered across his skin like spiders, as is searching for a crack to crawl into and hide. The caresses quickly turned to blows as their groans grew louder, quickly reaching a deafening crescendo. Erikar's screams of agony were lost in the cacophony of suffering sounding from every direction. He struggled against the mob, his shrieks becoming frenzied as he fought to free himself. The painful attacks from the creatures continued unabated, the stress from the blows breaking bones and skin alike. First, his left arm cracked, then twisted painfully around as one of the creatures torqued its upper body. Next, his right femur, then a rib, and another, until Erikar's howls of torment became interspersed with pitiful sobs of defeat. The crowd finally drew back, satisfied with the havoc they had wreaked upon the youth's prone form.
Constantine turned back to face his conquest. His pale face was an impassive mask as he regarded the broken boy, surrounded by the instruments of his defeat. Only his eyes betrayed the sorrow Constantine felt for the young assassin. He approached the weeping boy, grim resolve setting into his features.
"Do you understand now, boy? Do you understand the power of a dream?"
His question rang throughout every fiber of Erikar's being. The boy screamed, in defiance, in understanding, in acceptance. The cry faded back into bawling once again as the pain radiated through his shattered body. He couldn't respond to the intruder's question, almost unable to comprehend his existence through such suffering.
"It matters not. If you do not understand now, you will soon."
Constantine stood above his emerald-eyed adversary, his grip on the hilt of his sword tightening with determination. He drew his arm back, the point of his blade poised to bite into the heart of his target. Constantine wasted no more time, quickly thrusting the deadly tip at the object of his master's desire.
A split second before the sword tasted blood, Erikar disappeared with no sound or sight to accompany his departure. Constantine's blade met only the dirt upon which the youth had lain moments before. His eyes widened in disbelief, then narrowed in anger as he realized the only answer to this sudden development. Someone must have succeeded in waking Erikar.
-----------------------------------
The Ai'Brone, Corvanik, had been making his usual rounds through the Blackmist Hollows when he had heard a commotion coming from rooms that the members of the Order slept in. He rushed in to see the Erikar convulsing upon his bed, gruesome injuries with no apparent cause on his pale form. He was far too old to carry him to the infirmary alone, and the boy's condition was so critical that he might pass without instant intervention. So, he frantically worked to save the boy from death, using his knowledge of Ai'Brone healing to stave off the Reaper's cold grasp. His touch had woken the boy, drawing him out of the Fade just in time. Erikar's screams translated from the tainted dream world into reality, shattering the oppressive silence that shrouded the monk's efforts.
The wailing turned once more to sobs as his mind reached the saturation point of pain, and began to dull his senses. Constantine's question repeated endlessly through his mind, worming its way into every nook and cranny of his thoughts.
'What is the power of a dream of a dream?!' It asked, unyielding in its insistence.
"There is no power greater! I understand! I understand!!" Erikar bellowed in pain, wishing the question planted deep in his subconscious would relent. Corvanik looked on uncomprehending, his hands poised above the boy's broken body, working their painful magics. He would have the injured youth transported to the infirmary as soon as his condition stabilized. His master would need to know of this frightening occurrence.
Thread Title: Thick as Smoke and Cheap as Dreams (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?26826)
Judgment Type: No Judgment (Non-Competitive Quest Style)
Participants: Erikar & Odium
Erikar (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17194) Receives:
576 EXP!
75 GP!
Odium (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17266) Receives:
528 EXP!
75 GP!
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