Ashan 20th, 714
The caravan lulled to a peaceful, somber crawl as they neared Etzos, and Abaddon slept once again. As he lay in his bed, he wondered to the worlds out there with his eyes shut, streaming his thought with the desire to be cognizant of that inner dream world as the wiles of the nightly call dragged his mind away to oblivion.
Emerging from the thick mud of a forest, the nightmares welcomed him with asphyxiation, yet he rose free from his cursed hole and began a brisk run. "Bring me peace. Nightmares be away. I will be the lord of my own dreams!" he shouted to the bleak, red forest as he ran and ran. As always, the Harvestman drove its skinny leg into the earth before him, and he skidded to a halt, only this time when he turned with a shout, "be still!" he hissed, and at once his lucid mind took the reins, wrestling the creature of his own dreams into submission with intent.
Freed of the horror and yet not, its many eyes stared at him, waiting for his concentration to waiver. Abaddon's eyes dimmed to spiteful slits, and he stomped right beneath the many-legged beast, doing his best to believe that there would be a river with a boat beyond the treeline, and that the trees would thin. "A river, a boat, a river, a boat," he chanted with a quiet murmur, almost obsessively. He needed them for this to work.
When he crossed the thicket, he was met with the edge of the world dropping off before him, and also a thick black fog, a shadowy visage beneath it. A boat. It's a boat. It has to be a boat. With a sharp breath to lure the confidence to his forethought, he steeled himself, and jumped into the cloudy abyss. Falling upon his shoulder, he righted himself and splayed out his hands against the floor beneath him. It was warm, like the touch of another man. Skin.
I'm on a boat! he mentally screamed, shaking as he pulled his hands together into prayer. Kielik's horrors be praised, I'm on a boat. The boat is a hand. Pulling his head back, he inhaled the air around as the fog began to drift by him. Influencing his dreams, he rose from the nightmarish mists towards the stars, but instead as he broke the surface, his dreamcraft emerged buoyant upon the waters of a great river. Wonder filled his mind as he looked all around, and then towards the distance, formulating a plan on how he would leave this nightmare behind.
A vast human hand now sailed down a black river in the sky, falling off towards the gloom and doom of the world beneath. Abaddon sat upon it, maintaining that mental imagery of everything that haunted him falling far behind as the disjointed opposable fingers swam forward through the thick mucky tides of despair, bloated dead bodies floating in the water, reminding him of the unpleasant aftermath of a Mercenary group culling unwanted outsiders not welcome to Yaralon in his youth.
As a consolation, stars twinkled in the skies ahead in their myriad of constellations, Abaddon consciously moving the world around him towards that spark of hope. This was a test. Can I dream peacefully? Like a sage sitting with his monstrous oarsman beneath him, he paddled on towards the possibility. This was the most peaceful dream he’d had in Arcs, and he was trying desperately to pierce through the thick fog of Kielik’s nightmares to experience something else. Determined, he carried on, mentally fatigued and weary, his concentration slowly fading and allowing the in-between to fall further back into the darkened, cloudy skies behind him. I can do this, he told himself. I can escape the nightmares. I can control my own dreams. I am the master of my dreams, I can control them, he repeated with the imagery shaky in his mind. To Xiur’s stars, to Xiur’s stars. Gods above, I want to be up there, far far away from this place.
The river grew restless as time passed, mind unable to carry on the course. The stars never grew any closer, and now screams were roiling from the depths, calling for “help me!” like greedy savages, clawing at the hand, trying to find purchase. One managed to leap from the depths and wrap an arm around, babbling with terror. “You!” he whined from the edge, chin up as the swift current by his legs continued to drag him back. “Lift me up, please!”
Abaddon ignored it, trying his best to tune the noise from his mind. It’s all a nightmare. It has no worth. Except, he knew in his heart they were real in a sense, even if he had control. “This boat belongs to me,” he mentally assured himself. “None other.”
The figure continued to cry, until at last his screams were muffled by the frothing waters as the craft tilted down, fighting back against the dreamer’s will. The stars in the distance tilted up and away, and Abaddon was left with the sensation of the craft pulling away beneath his feet, forcing him to bend down and hug the hand. “No, no, pull up!” he tiredly roared. “Pull up!” It disobeyed, the river looping around and around in its spiral descent back towards a nightmarish world.
Suddenly he was in the fog again, wisps of the dark smoky mist racing by. Next, he broke free from the sky, the river carrying him towards a bristling carpet of titanic worms and tentacles. The Writhing FIelds. Oh no. Oh no. Heart beating swiftly, he held on tight, a lump forming in his throat as he shut his eyes in prayer. “Kielik, mercy. Mercy! I will sleep no more!” he bargained frantically. Try as he might to avoid the Nightmares of Kielik’s Blessing, they always found him.
The spell of fear wrapped around his mind like thick tendrils as the boat of his humanity crashed into the fields and shattered, throwing his body into the mass of creeping tendrils. At once they lashed and whipped, stinging his skin, before wrapping around, pulling him back, anchoring his head. “No. NO.” An arm broke free, ripping them away, reaching towards the sky as he wrestled with every fiber of his being, but he had lost the control, and this world was consuming him once more.
Squeezed at the throat, all thought of control vacated from his mind, pulling his arm back and thrashing, twisting to pull it away. The mass rose with him, a single glossy back tentacle coated with noxious flowery slime pushing against his lips for entry. Abaddon clenched his jaw in outright denial as he felt a bigger presence looming over him, his eyes trembling as they opened again to look upon her terrible wrinkled skin. Daring not to open his mouth for her, he fought valiantly, but she pried his jaw open, leaning in with her rows of shark-like teeth grinning intently. “Oh, but why do you resist me,” she crooned, the old crone rubbing his body with webbed hands, suspended from the end of her snake-like worm body. “It’s always such a pleasure to have you.”
This ‘game’ was the game she played, to get him to say a word. Every time. Every single time he spoke, she would jam her terrible monstrous finger down his throat, so he fell limp and focused on holding his jaw closed, whimpering for mercy as it pushed and pulled. As always, she was impatient, and simply pressed the cheeks of his face inward, holding his jaw open as she slid her foul thing down his throat. “Glk!” he gagged, retching, kicking, punching. It all mattered naught, and she stared down at him as she speared through the upper back of his throat and into his sinuses. Everything burned and he felt like he could no longer breathe, choking back the tears as it pushed deeper, the darkness encroaching. End it. End it now. End it, he prayed. End it. End it. The end could not come quickly enough, but it did as he blacked out and the world faded away.
A new world entered his mind, bringing him to the sound of a small girl clawing at the door. “Let me in, he’s going to get me,” she cried, her grating words a pox on his soul when he knew what she was, and that she would jump out the moment he obliged her. Every, single, time. No, The Crossroads was the reprieve, however brief. I hate the Writhing Fields. I need to control myself, my fear, my dreams, he shuddered, trying to regain his composure. Even now, he could feel her embrace, the old hag’s phantom things in his head.
The Oblivion is my choice.
Bring me to the oblivion.
Choosing to do nothing, the room began to blacken as it always did, the lack of something, the lack of feeling, the lack of sound embracing him at once and leaving his mind the sole denizen of a nightmare he could not move in, left alone to his thoughts.
