A dream all too real
You set yourself down to rest, finished with the days effort. The soft ambient sounds reassuring you that for a brief time at least, there is some calm in the world.
You drift off, head full of swirling clashes and the screams of town-folk as you recall the pitched fighting at Blasingdell, knowing the sounds for the phantoms they are, and yet still reeling from the adrenaline and emotion that flowed through your veins at the battle. Unlike a dream, the air still smells like the sulfurous fumes that blew through the city that morning, although it must be just a little bit of the stink still clinging to your nostrils, as that was weeks ago, and you know it is past.
At long last the din fades as you drift further down. Through ephemeral and dark clouded spaces into a deeper relaxation. Through warmth and weightlessness. Through deeper murk and blindness, and you realize that the pressure has mounted. The warmth become flames licking at you without their tell-tale light, but singeing nonetheless. The weight of the worlds and layers above begins to press down, and you feel yourself diving deeper, forced along a winding decline into depths that before were unknown to your calm state. The depths seem darker than midnight, and hotter than dragon-fire, but you cannot wake, though you must be asleep. You cannot remember when sleep came, if indeed sleep or unconsciousness this must be.
Abruptly you stop, and while you are still blind to your surroundings, the sense of pressure and sinking has ceased, a blessed piece of relief. You feel as though you can see, although there is quite an absence of anything to look at. Just a void, a lack, a conscious decision for nothing to exist here. With a little effort you feel it shift to your will. It's subtle, but the pressure you feel you can exert back from your mind does, something, to the void surrounding you. It is almost as if, with practice, this place would shape itself to your whims, becoming an environment of your identity.
Yet just as suddenly the pressure is back. Another presence has exerted it's will on your space, one that far exceeds your own, and you find yourself reeling internally. The pressure becomes cold, an icy chill that seems to scrape at your bones and sap your strength, and at once you realize this feeling is familiar. You have felt this before, in the touch and divine power of your patron, your sponsor, the architect of your bid for power, the one you now know as the Lady in White. Sabyn. When you conjure her name, it's as if summoning in truth, for she at once is just, there. Standing in the void, not on anything or by anything, but a pure white, opaque figure amidst the nothingness you find yourself swimming in.
She extends a hand to point, smooth and steady, and gives you a smile that against your desire to reign in your emotions, fills you with a giddiness and pleasure you've not felt from creatures of the living world. It's at once unholy and complete, a contradiction and spice that has no compare.
She speaks.
"You, who have been so easily set aside by others, you who have so carelessly been forgotten to languish among the refuse and waste of a world ruled by tyrants of ignorance, you who have been made a fool in a story so dull it demands the death of free thought, you, have now seen a glimpse of the change that can be wrought by those with will.
"You have now felt the pressure you can exude, and how it can shape your world. But this wonder is not just for this void. Through our actions, and your strength, this pressure can be enacted up ANY world." And as she speaks those last words the blackness becomes form, a light at first and then a cosmic swirl of energy, a scintillating web of color so bright it can hardly be called color at all, but rather raw untamed power. Amidst the webbing are shapes, both familiar and obscure. They dart and dance and flee and ride the waves of color. Sabyn gestures her hands back to her sides and webs compress. They swirl to her slow motion as she bends slightly and tilts everything the webs stands upon, with the shapes struggling in protest. They are outmatched, and the shapes dance to Sabyn's whims, little playthings to swing and sway. She gestures down and they fall away, the blackness returning and the pressure subsiding. A few shapes remain, and you instinctively raise your hand. They dance. You swing, they dodge and sway. You close your fist, and they are extinguished. The control is intoxicating.
"This is for us to enact upon the world. A taste of the power that lies within you. The Heralds will guide you, and the Dreadlord will release our power on the world, for if he does not, a cage of tyranny will be shut around it forever, and the freedom of will locked away."
"Do not forget, though the world will call you dark ones, or filth, or evil. Wretched or horrid or vile. You are in truth, the Chosen."
And with her words echoing in your ears the sense of lift is nauseating. The void vanishes and a burning light rushes past you as you are flung upwards, upwards toward whatever world exerts it's pressure downward. And just as it began, you are floating in comfort, your eyes opening to the familiar surroundings you left. But now, you feel the purpose is clear. Not clear in the detail, but clear in what truly matters. The conviction.
Your fellows eye you at first with suspicion, and then with knowing. It seems they have all seen the same thing, after a fashion. That settles one part. The Chosen are many.
You drift off, head full of swirling clashes and the screams of town-folk as you recall the pitched fighting at Blasingdell, knowing the sounds for the phantoms they are, and yet still reeling from the adrenaline and emotion that flowed through your veins at the battle. Unlike a dream, the air still smells like the sulfurous fumes that blew through the city that morning, although it must be just a little bit of the stink still clinging to your nostrils, as that was weeks ago, and you know it is past.
At long last the din fades as you drift further down. Through ephemeral and dark clouded spaces into a deeper relaxation. Through warmth and weightlessness. Through deeper murk and blindness, and you realize that the pressure has mounted. The warmth become flames licking at you without their tell-tale light, but singeing nonetheless. The weight of the worlds and layers above begins to press down, and you feel yourself diving deeper, forced along a winding decline into depths that before were unknown to your calm state. The depths seem darker than midnight, and hotter than dragon-fire, but you cannot wake, though you must be asleep. You cannot remember when sleep came, if indeed sleep or unconsciousness this must be.
Abruptly you stop, and while you are still blind to your surroundings, the sense of pressure and sinking has ceased, a blessed piece of relief. You feel as though you can see, although there is quite an absence of anything to look at. Just a void, a lack, a conscious decision for nothing to exist here. With a little effort you feel it shift to your will. It's subtle, but the pressure you feel you can exert back from your mind does, something, to the void surrounding you. It is almost as if, with practice, this place would shape itself to your whims, becoming an environment of your identity.
Yet just as suddenly the pressure is back. Another presence has exerted it's will on your space, one that far exceeds your own, and you find yourself reeling internally. The pressure becomes cold, an icy chill that seems to scrape at your bones and sap your strength, and at once you realize this feeling is familiar. You have felt this before, in the touch and divine power of your patron, your sponsor, the architect of your bid for power, the one you now know as the Lady in White. Sabyn. When you conjure her name, it's as if summoning in truth, for she at once is just, there. Standing in the void, not on anything or by anything, but a pure white, opaque figure amidst the nothingness you find yourself swimming in.
She extends a hand to point, smooth and steady, and gives you a smile that against your desire to reign in your emotions, fills you with a giddiness and pleasure you've not felt from creatures of the living world. It's at once unholy and complete, a contradiction and spice that has no compare.
She speaks.
"You, who have been so easily set aside by others, you who have so carelessly been forgotten to languish among the refuse and waste of a world ruled by tyrants of ignorance, you who have been made a fool in a story so dull it demands the death of free thought, you, have now seen a glimpse of the change that can be wrought by those with will.
"You have now felt the pressure you can exude, and how it can shape your world. But this wonder is not just for this void. Through our actions, and your strength, this pressure can be enacted up ANY world." And as she speaks those last words the blackness becomes form, a light at first and then a cosmic swirl of energy, a scintillating web of color so bright it can hardly be called color at all, but rather raw untamed power. Amidst the webbing are shapes, both familiar and obscure. They dart and dance and flee and ride the waves of color. Sabyn gestures her hands back to her sides and webs compress. They swirl to her slow motion as she bends slightly and tilts everything the webs stands upon, with the shapes struggling in protest. They are outmatched, and the shapes dance to Sabyn's whims, little playthings to swing and sway. She gestures down and they fall away, the blackness returning and the pressure subsiding. A few shapes remain, and you instinctively raise your hand. They dance. You swing, they dodge and sway. You close your fist, and they are extinguished. The control is intoxicating.
"This is for us to enact upon the world. A taste of the power that lies within you. The Heralds will guide you, and the Dreadlord will release our power on the world, for if he does not, a cage of tyranny will be shut around it forever, and the freedom of will locked away."
"Do not forget, though the world will call you dark ones, or filth, or evil. Wretched or horrid or vile. You are in truth, the Chosen."
And with her words echoing in your ears the sense of lift is nauseating. The void vanishes and a burning light rushes past you as you are flung upwards, upwards toward whatever world exerts it's pressure downward. And just as it began, you are floating in comfort, your eyes opening to the familiar surroundings you left. But now, you feel the purpose is clear. Not clear in the detail, but clear in what truly matters. The conviction.
Your fellows eye you at first with suspicion, and then with knowing. It seems they have all seen the same thing, after a fashion. That settles one part. The Chosen are many.
Plot type
Scene
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