[PROPHECY] The Stranding | The Promise

[Proddy 2415]

Spoiler

This vision may only be recieved by Seers, Naztherak and Naz-touched inscribed with the boon to view prophecies, Mystics with Hexing, Shamans with farsight and characters cursed with vivification. For more information about prophecies, check the thread below:

 

 

THE STRANDING

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

When you awake, you are not within your own bed.

 

You are in no place of familiarity. Dreary white grains of sand lap between your fingertips, yet they do not bring you any warmth or comfort. They feel only cold and somber, as melancholy as the deep thunderous clouds that swirl in an ominous cascade above you. Void are the squawks of gulls - only the wrathful lull of the sea beats and thrums beside you. The tide laps with fury against the shore, neverending and unrelenting. A fear grasps at you. Irrational, yet ever present. You feel instantly that if you strayed too close to the sea, it might engulf you whole.

 

As you stand, a sound alerts you to a presence to your right - a rather large presence, the sound of flapping and drumming against the sand. A mighty hammerhead, large and proud, lay washed upon the shore. The mighty beast seemed dead in the eyes, A trail of blood leads from the shore up to the lifeless sands in which it lay in agony - ichor still trickles from a gaping hole where its fin had once been. The predator of the seas, once ruthless and regal, had been maimed, left to die here alone at the foot of the ocean.

 

A pang of dread strikes you as you look upon it. You get the feeling that you too might perish, should you choose to tarry.

 

A chord of thunder strikes in the far distance, far beyond the sea where the eye can barely glimpse. The waves rattle and tremor with impatience, the seas beginning to rise in horrid crescendo. Up the waves begin to descend, climbing so high that they blot out what vestige of the pale sun peered through the stormy clouds. Before you mind can even register, before your body can even comprehend, those waters rain down upon you with vengeance, You wish to scream, yet you cannot. Your body is consumed, water filling your mouth and drowning your lungs. Your eyes, unable to shut, feel the sting of the saltwater - they burn as if you had been cast into fire, the sensation enough to turn you mad and blind.

 

Then…

 

Darkness. Sleep. The infinite limbo.

 

THE PROMISE

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

When your eyes shoot open again, you stand somewhere else. A decrepit woodland, dark and dinghy, far from the scorn of the sea. Tall trees surround you, stretching up toward the sky, their branches devoids of leaves and life. A pale glimmer of moonlight peaks through the woodland canopy - your only guide, your only light. An ebony canvas paints the skies, yet not a single star could be seen up there, in the great beyond of the cosmos,

 

Instinctively, you gaze forward. You are not alone. A clearing in the forest lingers ahead of you, where a great gallow tree sits rooted into the earth. Beneath a litany of hanged men, their damned souls bound to the void of  nature rather than the mercy of a cold hearse, a trio of women robed in dark shawls stand over a knelt man in a suit of steel armor. The cloaked women at their forefront, their leader, clutches an old knife in hand - ornate, ceremonial. Even from the distance you stand, you can see the kneeling man tremble and twitch.

 

He is afraid.

 

The voice of the knife-bearer begins to ring out. Harmonic, melodic - it belied a stark contrast to her shadowy visage.

 

Crowns of old, shrouds of gold…

 

All as fallible as shattered bones…

 

Around and around, the wheel doth turn…

 

Where great men churn, that which their lessers spurn…

 

Let your blood be your bond…

 

That which you may never abscond…

 

Glory, riches and all that which you dream…

 

All shall be cast in motion, as if the trickling of a river's stream…

 

But take heed, this bond you must never betray…

 

A vow to the Elder Gods, one from which you must never stray…

 

Take vestige of your soul, it shall never expire with time…

 

Let woe and misery befall the most base of your line…

 

The knife-bearer raises the knife. The knelt soldier trembles more frightfully. The deed is done in an instant - a clean, precise slit across the palm. In bloody rivulets, the knelt mans ichor spills down across the roots of the gallow tree.

 

The trio of women begin to chant in chorus.

 

The pact is struck!

 

The deed is paid!

 

The Gods be our witness!

 

Let ye be spared from the futility of the grave!

 

The winds flap and flail around you, aghast. The trees rattled and groaned, as if given life by something unholy, something beyond the natural state in which they inhabited. 

 

And that chord of thunder struck once more, like the clanging of a heralding bell, loud and vicious and cruel.