A Rat's Dream

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Vast and eternal, the cerulean sky was cloudless to the eye. Viewed from an opening within the thicket, the lush cypress forest was alive in tranquil singing of birds, harmonized with a trill of cicadas buzzing atop their perches. The sun was just hidden beyond the canopy’s loom, peaking through rays of white that washed a man’s pale flesh.

 

A breeze rustled the trees, their branches, the lush grass beneath. In ease with the world, the man lazed through time whilst azure sky fell to speckled black, the yawning expanse of the infinite night now lay before him.

 

 A moon waned at zenith above his head, the heavenly body casting silver light over the glade. It was in an eerie silence that the birds silenced their song, insects ceased their call. 

 

 

The earth stilled to a halt.

 

 

Roots clambered forth, clamping his arms to the ground with a force inhuman. Pushing, pulling, no matter how he thrashed, wooden arms stilled him. Black candles lined his perimeter, each lit in onyx flame as a hellish sacrament was born.

 

With a groan did the dirt begin to split, more roots crept upwards, determined to pull him beneath. Fingers bled, fingers failed to find purchase on the precipice of a yawning pit, to claw away the serpentine roots.

 

The vision grew dark, the man cried aloud to scream for aid, alas roots shot to clamp down his jaw- a tongue was bloodied, its end bitten off clean. A wooden lattice enveloped the remnant moonlight that peaked from pinholes into the earth, the last of the light gone with the man’s last whimper.

 

A name resounded in his head, a scream that threatened to explode his ears in booming thunder, 

”WOLTAINE!”

 

 

 

Bound was the damned mortal to an eternal prison beneath.

 

Infinite silence was all that was left thereafter, waiting. Time passed, the man unknowing of how long he had been entombed.

 

Hope left what remained, leaving behind a husk, a vessel, a blank slate. 

 

 

. . .

 

 

Light.

 

Warm, amber, as small as a firefly it birthed before his vision. It warmed his nose, the first warmth he’d felt in time immemorial.

 

Sputtering to a flame was a candle’s light, offering a meager hope. It was a whisper, a break from the mute death beneath the earth.

 

The flame burgeoned to greater heights, its once warming effect was now immolating. Roots began to smolder before the man’s blurred vision.

 

A horrid cry rang out as the wooden limbs eased upward, the blaze consumed the pit. Crackling, his ears were filled with the sound of singed flesh, of a crepitation, of hope. He rose from the chasm wreathed in golden flame to find the forest a wall of fury, spanning to a sky of starless black. Ash rained from the once Cerulean sky, the man now began to smell his bubbling flesh, the singing of hairs- began to hear the screams of the inferno - began to cough.

 

Coughing, coughing, coughing, the vision faded with the ash that blinded.

 

Coughing, coughing, the screams receded to a crackling of a hearth.

 

Coughing, the man awoke. Sweat covered his face, screaming awake, he clutched at his heart. A book was jostled from his lap once he reared up from the terror, panting heavily in the library’s heart.

 

 A hand, slightly burned, had been carelessly fallen too close to the fireplace in his stupor. His eyes danced from shelf to shelf, muttering a low curse as he drank from his waterskin, before pouring out a stream onto his reddened palm. 

 

Calaron's voice was hoarse, barely carried as he muttered,

 “Goran.”