Cylus 5th, 715
Wishywashy days and nights, Abaddon’s sense of time was off. Sleeping when he could, he hunted in his dreams, only to awake, unsure of which reality he was in. The consuming darkness of solitary confinement did not bode well on the mind, and the man’s nature as a dreamer compounded this to an extreme effect. Even now he listened to the quiet sobs, so faint, in the cell next door to him. The man he’d corrupted, who still felt the ills of the Corruption, his God-given power instilled upon another. This sound kept him rooted in his sanity, though the man could not, would not fall asleep, for fear of the beast in his dreams.
The last few times he’d drifted off in his own mind, the plains of his Dreamscape were empty, save for the wisps of thought that served as chew toys for his mind to gnaw on. They weren’t ‘real’ in the sense that they didn’t have souls, but they felt tangible enough to keep him sane and entertained, although his mind seemed hellbent on showing him the same nightmare no matter his Intent, the same room he’d lived in for much of the last Season. This prison cell, this solitary confinement.
The usual sort of thing happened as it always did; deprived of victims to steal sleep from in the waking reality, he drifted off to the endless dark, staring up at the ceiling asleep, yet awake, just as he’d done in Idalos, except now he was dreaming. Isolation in itself was a nightmare, and his will had been weak for many Trials until he was given the spark of motivation from a chance encounter in his dreams with the prisoner next door.
Yet, the man didn’t sleep, so he never found him again, not that he could control it. With a deep sigh, he wondered to those other dreamers, those potential victims way out there beyond. Holding too tightly to reality, to how he should be, was the mistake he wanted to avoid. The dreams had a certain way about them, capable of being influenced, yet never fully controlled. Such was the case for his current predicament, but he still had to wonder, to try, with that feeling driving him to know if he could find more dreamers to hunt.
Hunger, a deep-seated sadism inside him born out of necessity, stirred endlessly in its complex intensity. Cajoled by whispers of the mind, he delved in places, reaching for corners, scratching at the surface with the claws of a caged animal. For the first time in Trials, he rose from his stone bed abruptly and stood upon his shaking legs, an anger in his heart mixing to a potent brew, and at last he erupted.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
The sound of breaking glass filled his ears, and the world around him shattered into a million pieces, shards of glass hitting a pool of reflective silver and sinking beneath the surface he now stood upon. A black abyss all around save for his own reflection, and the myriad of bubbles in the sky. Tilting his head, eyes cast skyward, he spied a large amorphous blob in the sky, golden rays of sunshine shining over a blossoming tree at sunset, a woman sitting beneath the flowering boughs. Where am I...? His hands flexed, and he reached with his mind, pulling the visions of that place closer, fixated on it. Outside looking in, he blinked slowly, stunned by the surreal beauty before him.
This is someone else’s dream. I’ve only ever known nightmares.
A creature itched at his mind like a flea agitating skin, a monster he’d made an Arc ago on the caravan to Etzos, a worm with a fearsome light, begging to be let out, but he’d never found a way. Now, from this place, it throbbed more intently, so much so that Abaddon began to choke into his palms, coughing out the black snake which grew in his palm to its full two foot length, shrouded in a bubble of black, like a seed. It was so natural, it was what he desired to do, to make others suffer in the same manner, to survive and be rebuilt in Kielik’s ways as he had. “No, no, it’s all so disgusting,” he hissed, not to the writhing slime-coated beastie in his hand, but to the sparkling array of stars in the sky of this window to another world beneath a comforting orange glow.
“How can she even dare. I’ve had no such comfort.” Jealousy and revulsion were chief among his feelings as he witnessed this abomination. “That’s not how things are supposed to be. That isn’t right.” Emotions boiling over, the remnants of his fury flared while he held out his arm to the side. Turning and throwing his weight into the cast, he yeeted the black ball containing his pocket beast straight at that repugnant dream. It whistled through the air like a firework arcing through the sky before bursting into a black miasma of wispy black tendrils upon the surface of the Dreamscape. As he watched it sink in, he felt as if he’d become in tune with the dream, the connection from his blessing yielding a certain connection now that he’d polluted it with the Umbral Worm. The parasite now crept through the grass behind the sitting woman, the sun setting at last to a blackened starless sky. Above, the boughs of the tree wilted, browning, leaves falling, and a harsh wind blew them all away until the world was nothing but a barren wasteland, a shade of what it once was.
Emily Merrywhistle, hostess of many a party in Etzos felt a tug at her skirt, a harsh orange glow behind her shining over her back. She froze as the cool thing climbed beneath her clothes, sliding across bare, shivering skin. That shaking body couldn’t help but utter a few whimpers as it finally slid up her collar. At last she screamed, but clenched her jaw, a useless shivering statue like prey to a mortifying monster. The snake hissed, and she sat there motionless, too stunned to even grasp at its scaly form as its bright light blinded her. Biting into her lip, the snake made her gasp, and it advanced beyond into her mouth.
The woman’s wrists shook, hands flailing like flapping sheets in the wind while she was forced to gag on the parasite sliding down her throat. Eyes watering, she screamed the rest of her breath away and fell back to the muddy earth, her body writhing and kicking at the mud, reaching up to grasp her throat now that the spell of fear over her had lifted to free her body from its freeze. Abaddon saw all of this, admiring from a distance how simply tainting the dream and sending the little Nightmare he’d made out to feast upon her had given her such grief.
There was an esoteric sort of feeling in Abaddon as he felt there was still more to this. Raising his hand, he balled it into a fist as his worm pushed at her belly, roiling beneath the skin to her horror. The taint of Emea began to seep into the dream, black tendrils of smoke smiting her body from the inside as he thought to give her the same corruption he’d given that man. To his chagrin, the spell burst, reaching its limit. There isn’t enough? It was frustrating to think he could only give her the slightest hint of Kielik’s will to carry with her into the waking will, but this Minor Corruption would suffice. As he lifted his chin, he thought to it, consciously molding the corruption into something smaller that he felt the amount of ether could handle. This time, the tendrils met their mark and sunk into her body, filling her lungs. Disappointing as it may be, a cold will suffice... Abaddon wished he could do so much more, but he knew he was only growing, still a newborn agent of Kielik by contrast.
The woman started hacking and coughing as the Corruption took hold, a nasty cough to scour her lungs for the next few Trials. “Return...” he called to his worm, concentrating on it. The little beast burst from her throat, black gel in its wake. The orange light returned, her form lifeless, eyes distant as they stared trembling into that powerful aura snaking away. Beast reaching the edge of the dream, it seeped through back into the veil as a mass of black goo, dripping onto the mirrored surface below before Abaddon drew the substance back into his palm, reclaiming the Nightmare as a part of his mind. The results of the evening were fantastic, but he knew he had much work to do, stepping across the Veil to other Dreamscapes and haunting those as well for the rest of the night, all this with his physical vessel imprisoned in an Etzori dungeon.
Wishywashy days and nights, Abaddon’s sense of time was off. Sleeping when he could, he hunted in his dreams, only to awake, unsure of which reality he was in. The consuming darkness of solitary confinement did not bode well on the mind, and the man’s nature as a dreamer compounded this to an extreme effect. Even now he listened to the quiet sobs, so faint, in the cell next door to him. The man he’d corrupted, who still felt the ills of the Corruption, his God-given power instilled upon another. This sound kept him rooted in his sanity, though the man could not, would not fall asleep, for fear of the beast in his dreams.
The last few times he’d drifted off in his own mind, the plains of his Dreamscape were empty, save for the wisps of thought that served as chew toys for his mind to gnaw on. They weren’t ‘real’ in the sense that they didn’t have souls, but they felt tangible enough to keep him sane and entertained, although his mind seemed hellbent on showing him the same nightmare no matter his Intent, the same room he’d lived in for much of the last Season. This prison cell, this solitary confinement.
The usual sort of thing happened as it always did; deprived of victims to steal sleep from in the waking reality, he drifted off to the endless dark, staring up at the ceiling asleep, yet awake, just as he’d done in Idalos, except now he was dreaming. Isolation in itself was a nightmare, and his will had been weak for many Trials until he was given the spark of motivation from a chance encounter in his dreams with the prisoner next door.
Yet, the man didn’t sleep, so he never found him again, not that he could control it. With a deep sigh, he wondered to those other dreamers, those potential victims way out there beyond. Holding too tightly to reality, to how he should be, was the mistake he wanted to avoid. The dreams had a certain way about them, capable of being influenced, yet never fully controlled. Such was the case for his current predicament, but he still had to wonder, to try, with that feeling driving him to know if he could find more dreamers to hunt.
Hunger, a deep-seated sadism inside him born out of necessity, stirred endlessly in its complex intensity. Cajoled by whispers of the mind, he delved in places, reaching for corners, scratching at the surface with the claws of a caged animal. For the first time in Trials, he rose from his stone bed abruptly and stood upon his shaking legs, an anger in his heart mixing to a potent brew, and at last he erupted.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
The sound of breaking glass filled his ears, and the world around him shattered into a million pieces, shards of glass hitting a pool of reflective silver and sinking beneath the surface he now stood upon. A black abyss all around save for his own reflection, and the myriad of bubbles in the sky. Tilting his head, eyes cast skyward, he spied a large amorphous blob in the sky, golden rays of sunshine shining over a blossoming tree at sunset, a woman sitting beneath the flowering boughs. Where am I...? His hands flexed, and he reached with his mind, pulling the visions of that place closer, fixated on it. Outside looking in, he blinked slowly, stunned by the surreal beauty before him.
This is someone else’s dream. I’ve only ever known nightmares.
A creature itched at his mind like a flea agitating skin, a monster he’d made an Arc ago on the caravan to Etzos, a worm with a fearsome light, begging to be let out, but he’d never found a way. Now, from this place, it throbbed more intently, so much so that Abaddon began to choke into his palms, coughing out the black snake which grew in his palm to its full two foot length, shrouded in a bubble of black, like a seed. It was so natural, it was what he desired to do, to make others suffer in the same manner, to survive and be rebuilt in Kielik’s ways as he had. “No, no, it’s all so disgusting,” he hissed, not to the writhing slime-coated beastie in his hand, but to the sparkling array of stars in the sky of this window to another world beneath a comforting orange glow.
“How can she even dare. I’ve had no such comfort.” Jealousy and revulsion were chief among his feelings as he witnessed this abomination. “That’s not how things are supposed to be. That isn’t right.” Emotions boiling over, the remnants of his fury flared while he held out his arm to the side. Turning and throwing his weight into the cast, he yeeted the black ball containing his pocket beast straight at that repugnant dream. It whistled through the air like a firework arcing through the sky before bursting into a black miasma of wispy black tendrils upon the surface of the Dreamscape. As he watched it sink in, he felt as if he’d become in tune with the dream, the connection from his blessing yielding a certain connection now that he’d polluted it with the Umbral Worm. The parasite now crept through the grass behind the sitting woman, the sun setting at last to a blackened starless sky. Above, the boughs of the tree wilted, browning, leaves falling, and a harsh wind blew them all away until the world was nothing but a barren wasteland, a shade of what it once was.
Emily Merrywhistle, hostess of many a party in Etzos felt a tug at her skirt, a harsh orange glow behind her shining over her back. She froze as the cool thing climbed beneath her clothes, sliding across bare, shivering skin. That shaking body couldn’t help but utter a few whimpers as it finally slid up her collar. At last she screamed, but clenched her jaw, a useless shivering statue like prey to a mortifying monster. The snake hissed, and she sat there motionless, too stunned to even grasp at its scaly form as its bright light blinded her. Biting into her lip, the snake made her gasp, and it advanced beyond into her mouth.
The woman’s wrists shook, hands flailing like flapping sheets in the wind while she was forced to gag on the parasite sliding down her throat. Eyes watering, she screamed the rest of her breath away and fell back to the muddy earth, her body writhing and kicking at the mud, reaching up to grasp her throat now that the spell of fear over her had lifted to free her body from its freeze. Abaddon saw all of this, admiring from a distance how simply tainting the dream and sending the little Nightmare he’d made out to feast upon her had given her such grief.
There was an esoteric sort of feeling in Abaddon as he felt there was still more to this. Raising his hand, he balled it into a fist as his worm pushed at her belly, roiling beneath the skin to her horror. The taint of Emea began to seep into the dream, black tendrils of smoke smiting her body from the inside as he thought to give her the same corruption he’d given that man. To his chagrin, the spell burst, reaching its limit. There isn’t enough? It was frustrating to think he could only give her the slightest hint of Kielik’s will to carry with her into the waking will, but this Minor Corruption would suffice. As he lifted his chin, he thought to it, consciously molding the corruption into something smaller that he felt the amount of ether could handle. This time, the tendrils met their mark and sunk into her body, filling her lungs. Disappointing as it may be, a cold will suffice... Abaddon wished he could do so much more, but he knew he was only growing, still a newborn agent of Kielik by contrast.
The woman started hacking and coughing as the Corruption took hold, a nasty cough to scour her lungs for the next few Trials. “Return...” he called to his worm, concentrating on it. The little beast burst from her throat, black gel in its wake. The orange light returned, her form lifeless, eyes distant as they stared trembling into that powerful aura snaking away. Beast reaching the edge of the dream, it seeped through back into the veil as a mass of black goo, dripping onto the mirrored surface below before Abaddon drew the substance back into his palm, reclaiming the Nightmare as a part of his mind. The results of the evening were fantastic, but he knew he had much work to do, stepping across the Veil to other Dreamscapes and haunting those as well for the rest of the night, all this with his physical vessel imprisoned in an Etzori dungeon.
enjoy the rewards.