thequeennadine 311 Share Posted January 1, 2023 (edited) [[ The events detailed on this thread are known only to those unfortunate enough to have experienced the vision first hand. They have been informed accordingly. For everyone else, feel free to clown on my creative writing! ]] Spoiler Caught beneath an unnatural fog, the Executor waited. How long had he dozed in its somnolent, russet curls? Brief feelings of slumber, coddling and warm blunted his senses. He recognized ensorcelled stagnation. Petrification. Comfort estranged him; he wriggled to escape this excruciating sensation. Empty darkness robbed him of anything beyond this sleeping, waking nausea. He might have allowed it to consume him entirely, if left to his apathy. Had the choking, frostbitten touch of gnarled fingers not closed around his throat. In an instant, he was doused in frigid waters. Blistering pain blossomed from each of his extremities; gooseflesh crawled over his skin. His senses were too sharp, too aware. Every feeling that had been lost to that droll numbness returned, vengeful for having been even briefly forgotten. The spirit of Dread crawled past his reawakening wits, hammering itself against his heart in a horrid furor. Past the Executor’s struggle towards consciousness, a whisper filled his mind. Deceptively soft, it deigned, “Thine anonymity is lost; Fate knows ye meddlesome hand. Now revealed, unveiled, suffering will stalk thee. Take on these oaths. Lighten thine eyes. The sky shall open soon.” With a harsh breath inwards, the Executor came to. The wintry air abound should have burned his withered lungs; it should have made him regret waking so suddenly. But no resounding ache settled on him. No crackle, nor hiss. As uncomfortable as he was, finding himself sat and huddled low at the bank of some river, he felt healthier than ever. Why had he expected anything less? The traumatic memory of that russet slumber faded, crouching in the recesses of his mind. And without the weight of it weighing him down, the Executor rose easily to his feet. There was a familiar, well-trodden quality to the forest vista. It calmed him, reaching his core as it seeped from every branch and bough. The region was cast in the low light of a winter sun. Setting swiftly, it lent a sparkle to everything, patches of frost catching its dying glow. Even the river, though high and rancorous in its trickle past, reminded him of home. It was a sure sign that salvation was near. Would it lead him there, if he followed its flow? For several hours, he let untiring strides carry his trek through the wilds. They remained bathed in the half-light of eventide whe whole while; the sky had rotted slowly, as if waiting for him to falter. When he finally did, the Executor noted a soft flurry of snow in its descent past the canopy overhead. The flakes were dull and ashy. The runoff of a great pyre? Dampness lingered where they met with his clothes, melting against the heat. Hurry forced its way into his gait, endeavoring to outrun the droll flurry, and its quick growth into a storm. The susurrus of falling snow and howling winds only worsened in response to his haste. “While black, palatine snows, Piled about the standard of ancient Night, Swell the fount whence Aerial rows; When that blanket of ashen dust threatened to swallow him, the Executor slept. His day-long scramble along the riverbank had carried him far. Far enough that small markers of civilization had begun to appear in the familiar wood. Charms of sticks, twine, and mottled feathers swayed from trees. A boat had been moored against some dilapidated dock a ways back, though he didn’t dare test its offer of swifter travel downriver. At a fork in the stygian flow, he had even glimpsed a banner, flickering ominously in the night. He did not recognize any of the symbols cast against its vacuous expanse. Unfamiliar, and alien, it filled him with fear. It might have marked the territory of a people unknown to him. Would he find home, if he traveled opposite from it? Anxiety throbbed behind his eyes, mocking, and jeering. It urged him to find somewhere safe to rest ‘til morning. Morning did not come. When the Executor opened his eyes anew, he glimpsed that same half-light, simmering weakly from yonder West. It felt weaker. Further? Still, he brought himself to his feet. Where weariness should have followed his fitful, too-long slumber, he felt... nothing. All night he forged onward, following the river past a thinning treeline, across a flat plain of packed ice, and finally, to the expanse of some lake shore. Past swirling gales of black snow, he looked on to his destination. The river had led him home. While the salt-swollen sea, in its blight, Eats the dock where ancestors moored; While the final scribe, proven and right, It took the Executor another too-long rest, and then a walk beneath the half-light of a shortened day, to reach the city walls. Their bricks were caked by the perpetual fall of mourning ash, left to crack and crumble. It was as if they had suffered for an age in his absence. He strode past a gate left ajar, and began to stalk dimly lit streets. Everywhere he looked, eyes flashed at him from the dark. Faces, which quickly proved themselves untrusting and strange, gawked from behind shuttered windows. The lanes which he still felt to be his, were strewn with thin packs of frightened kine. In one alley, he watched, horrified, as one watcher plucked another’s bleeding corpse of its belongings. Skittish, the Executor locked eyes with that thief. He watched as it clutched its bludgeon, and slowly stalked off into the night. He couldn’t bring himself to risk approaching the victim. All of it was alive with a low tumult of commotion that twisted his gut into knots. The raucous fervor of markets, famous for its hawkers and many tourists, replayed in his mind. It was discordant against the hushed murmurs of tradesmen too wary to show their wares publicly. Flags and sanguine streamers, denoting plague-stricken wards, fluttered wanly in place of his people’s colorful tapestries. Defeated hope threatened to bring him to tears. Looks onto our ending days, abhorred, Where the decency of man will rust– In the innocent blood poured; With familiarity turned against him, the Executor began to fade. How long had he suffered this fruitless, unending search? His faltering steps carried him from back streets, through once bustling parks, and, finally, to the ruined city square. No one lingered there, on account of the haze that clung at its corners. A stench like ages old death quickly began to prick at his eyes. It choked the ash from his lungs. He had found faces known to him. They decorated the streets, locked beneath blankets of frigid black. The square had become a tomb. A tomb for a mother, a friend, a prince, a brother. And so, so many more. Finally, the world began to dim. Darkening skies forced the Executor to his knees. While beneath the seal of ruin's dust, Even dead mouths daren’t mutter in their sleep, 'Lest they betray Dread's fickle trust; Shackled beneath that sky in its gradual darkening to pitch, the Executor waited. The pain of aspirations dashed, and doubts that there had ever been another way forward, gripped at him. With his resignation, the world, too, began its crawl toward nameless oblivion. That graveyard began to sprawl, eking outwards to form a basin of serpentine and death. Wherever its stone and soil touched, structures bled away. They became haunting things. Trees, with slick bark like congealed oil; dark monoliths, atop hummocks of hapless souls churned to salt. The largest of them, at the nadir’s barren center, was the crevasse where daylight had gone to die. Overhead, a bleeding rune flared. It marred the sky with its vicious light, exuberant. It was a wound, a cocoon, and a leering eye all at once. Pinpricks of wonder began to scatter from their constellations; eventually, they would be consumed by it as well. Where the familiarity of a wintry forest had once comforted the Executor, the nightmarish wasteland that surrounded him now invited only sorrow. Was there ever hope? He fretted, and began to rot. While dusky skies are made to weep, Recalling a moon and stars, now none, Beyond it, the circuit of a sunless deep. Gnarled fingers closed around his throat, terrible and cold. The Executor could feel their talons, and the rough texture of monstrous, feather-mottled skin. He could feel the way its scarred palm scratched at his nape, welcoming dread into his heart once more. With a rasping breath, and a voice no longer disguised behind any softness, the thing croaked. Its words permeated everything. They had been haunting his macabre procession the entire time.This spell of mine shall not be done. And your curse, to be lifted- never. Break thine binding oaths, even one.. And suffer with these forgotten things, forever. Edited January 1, 2023 by thequeennadine 13 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
excited 10833 Share Posted January 1, 2023 The elf Aegnor of House Sov thusly pursued the Oracle, seeking for her assistance with regards to the divination of his future. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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