Cylus 10th, 715
Ignis. Corporal Ignis Asmodus. Retired Etzori soldier-turned-entrepreneur. The clang of his hammer proved to be a great asset for the Etzori in his older years, dutiful dedication creating a swathe of weaponry fit for a powerful army. The ills of his venture were for naught: war had gripped his mind. Conflicts with Etzos’ neighbors proved to be too much, and he was stricken with a disorder that made him relive these conflicts day by day, night by night. Abaddon being there with him in this Dreamscape meant little to the state of things. Always, he would have these nightmares, regardless. It was that doomed fate that perhaps drew them together that night.
The shape his nightmare took was that of a severed arm, something his mind afflicted him with, to tell him that everything was okay when he really was anything but. All the men in his dreams were disfigured, including the man above him, eyeless sockets staring out as long jagged teeth lay broken and cracked from his guttered lips. “That’s quite a sight,” Abaddon remarked aloud, drawn to lucidity by the vivid imagery of this dream.
Ignis ignored him. “I need to fulfill this quota, but there are too many swords to make in so little time.”
”Everyone’s in the same boat. Stop your yammering and get to it, Ignis. The man at the top put this order in, and that’s the demand we have to meet. You’re the supplier, as are the rest of us.” The guild smith toppled the older veteran with a shove. “You’re on contract, now get back to work!” The door slammed suddenly, and the warrior-smith crawled to a stool, pulling his hat off and putting his face in his palms.
“You’re just going to let him do this to you? You lack a spine.”
”I’ve seen spines ripped from bodies,” the smith replied, and then went silent.
”Maybe you forgot when you were ripped from yours.”
The exchange settled in the air before the man inhaled and stood, grabbing his hammer and saw and getting back to work. Abaddon watched him set a severed limb upon the anvil with care, clamping it steady with the vice before getting to work. It was intriguing to watch the man work, how he always had this solemnity in his eyes, recounting flashes of his past that bled out into the dream around them. “This mind is so broken, so warped...” Abaddon murmured so quiet as to not be heard, a trespasser to someone’s deepest insecurities.
Piece by piece, the grim creation took shape, before naught but bone and sinew remained. The black cords were wrapped round and round the hilt of a darkened red dagger, bone hammered away into a splintered point as if it were some kind of metal. When that one was done, he went to the next, an endless cycle for a man in endless agony.
This went on for a few more daggers, Abaddon wondering if his condition would change, but there was so much maniacal stability in it all. This dream was on a single, grisly track, and it played the same sad song to such dismal effect. Abaddon grabbed a slip of paper and wrote a new contract. “Remember them,” it said, and he pinned it to the wall of the workshop with a nail where the other contract had been left.
“There’s a new order,” Abaddon then told him. “Care to look?”
The smith paused, looking half-way over his shoulder before rising and lifting a rag to his face. He was sweating from the heat of the ...boneforge? Curious. The man took the leaflet down and pulled a monocle to his eye, reading over the two words. “A tall order,” he grumbled. “So unreasonable, I can’t imagine what the Grand Marshall wants with these... more young men to march to their deaths, likely.”
“Isn’t that kind of talk treasonous?” Abaddon remarked.
”If that’s what I die from, I deserve it.”
Abaddon fell silent again, mystified by his mindset. “How do you plan to get the order done?”
”I have my ideas,” the old man said, brandishing one of the bone knives. “Maybe it’s best to forget.” Turning the knife upon himself, he angled it up towards the socket of his eye and began to carve, body shaking and jolting. How the man did not wake up then was a mystery to Abaddon, but perhaps, he thought, Ignis might already be missing an eye. Anything was a possibility in dreams after all, but that made the most sense. Some horrors were more effective than others, and what made one squirm might be a daily occurrence to another. Fear was such a complicated thing.
Scooping out his memories, he laid them out on the anvil, bright azure jewels tainted with motes of black smoke. It was such a depressing thing to witness, Abaddon growing bored as the man nursed his inner tragedies with such a small microcosm of creativity to be had for the world abound. Touching the man upon the shoulder, he imparted, to liven his own mood, an ailment. What better the suffering than constant hiccups? he thought, and so it came to be that the man shook with the gulping, feminine sound of a loud hiccup, doing so even in his sleep.
The man awoke a moment later to breathe in his old age, deprived of oxygen, so Abaddon found the dreamscape shifting back to his own. I’m not so in the mood to play cat and mouse with my imagination tonight, he told himself, and so he focused on the world beyond, the Veil., a mirrored landscape, a vast ocean of translucent material dotted with bubbles merging and vanishing in the skies above and below like a twisting tunnel of whirling images.
Used to the disorienting nature of the place by now and thus wandering the Veil that night with more curiosity than was usual, Abaddon’s eyes couldn’t help but stare out at the vast expanse of moving images, a sufferance worth of happy, sickening positive emotion dominating the vast majority of this realm. One by one he scanned them for subjects of interest, trying to find something that stood out. Someone was flying over a wondrous landscape, and he paused, standing at the edge.
His first instinct was to scorn them then, but something else laid hooks in his mind, and he found himself living vicariously through the image. Beautiful, actually. Watching along like someone watching their favorite television show, he sat there for perhaps a Break watching the sun set, wings flapping in a world that followed along and built itself to manifest the reality guided by a mind that sought freedom. It was a cathartic sense of relaxation that he felt he could scarcely get enough of. They are a bird. How liberating. Fantastic, really.
But, as he knew, reality tended to make one grounded. It’s a shame that I feel so compelled to bring it ruin. Must I ruin all of it? He held out his palm, a menacing black orb of sludge forming there in his hand, the outline of a writhing worm inside, a Nightmare. “Regrettable,” he groused, and tossed the black light skyward. It sailed through the air, streaking through the sky like a firework before smacking against the edge of the dream. Outside looking in, he watched the creature he’d summoned bleed through into the reality.
Instantly, things were different. Clouds formed, and rain began to fall. Darkness spread across the land, and flying grew to be more difficult. The inner fear took hold, and the wings could no longer grip the air to lift the body aloft. Plummeting, the nameless man fell to the earth with a thud, and there the Umbral Worm awaited him, its red glow paralyzing his body. Abaddon almost winced at the contrast, the avian body of the man shifting back to its natural humanity, complete with limitations and flaws without that idyllic freedom.
Entering his body, the worm tortured him to such a degree that Abaddon looked down in respect. “I am but the agent. I do as I must to survive,” he muttered from this point of conflicted morality. “The realm of Nightmares is where I work, night by night, and I am but a force of nature, carrying it onward.” Looking back to the man, he felt that grotesque connection now, between himself and the parasite as he reached out, squeezing his fist and imagining what small Corruption he would offer. It did not work, for Abaddon had already beset another with Kielik's curse moments ago. Curious, he thought.
Perhaps you will bring yourself injury if you are not careful, or maybe you will use that desire for freedom to bring about something interesting. Consider yourself lucky there is only so much of me to go around. Abaddon called to the worm, extracting it from the Dreamscape until it bled forth from the liquid surface of the dream and plopped to the mirrored floor, crawling to him and sinking into his body for later use.
The ends justified the means. “I will continue to be your hand in all this, Kielik,” he muttered to all of one who could perhaps hear.
Ignis. Corporal Ignis Asmodus. Retired Etzori soldier-turned-entrepreneur. The clang of his hammer proved to be a great asset for the Etzori in his older years, dutiful dedication creating a swathe of weaponry fit for a powerful army. The ills of his venture were for naught: war had gripped his mind. Conflicts with Etzos’ neighbors proved to be too much, and he was stricken with a disorder that made him relive these conflicts day by day, night by night. Abaddon being there with him in this Dreamscape meant little to the state of things. Always, he would have these nightmares, regardless. It was that doomed fate that perhaps drew them together that night.
The shape his nightmare took was that of a severed arm, something his mind afflicted him with, to tell him that everything was okay when he really was anything but. All the men in his dreams were disfigured, including the man above him, eyeless sockets staring out as long jagged teeth lay broken and cracked from his guttered lips. “That’s quite a sight,” Abaddon remarked aloud, drawn to lucidity by the vivid imagery of this dream.
Ignis ignored him. “I need to fulfill this quota, but there are too many swords to make in so little time.”
”Everyone’s in the same boat. Stop your yammering and get to it, Ignis. The man at the top put this order in, and that’s the demand we have to meet. You’re the supplier, as are the rest of us.” The guild smith toppled the older veteran with a shove. “You’re on contract, now get back to work!” The door slammed suddenly, and the warrior-smith crawled to a stool, pulling his hat off and putting his face in his palms.
“You’re just going to let him do this to you? You lack a spine.”
”I’ve seen spines ripped from bodies,” the smith replied, and then went silent.
”Maybe you forgot when you were ripped from yours.”
The exchange settled in the air before the man inhaled and stood, grabbing his hammer and saw and getting back to work. Abaddon watched him set a severed limb upon the anvil with care, clamping it steady with the vice before getting to work. It was intriguing to watch the man work, how he always had this solemnity in his eyes, recounting flashes of his past that bled out into the dream around them. “This mind is so broken, so warped...” Abaddon murmured so quiet as to not be heard, a trespasser to someone’s deepest insecurities.
Piece by piece, the grim creation took shape, before naught but bone and sinew remained. The black cords were wrapped round and round the hilt of a darkened red dagger, bone hammered away into a splintered point as if it were some kind of metal. When that one was done, he went to the next, an endless cycle for a man in endless agony.
This went on for a few more daggers, Abaddon wondering if his condition would change, but there was so much maniacal stability in it all. This dream was on a single, grisly track, and it played the same sad song to such dismal effect. Abaddon grabbed a slip of paper and wrote a new contract. “Remember them,” it said, and he pinned it to the wall of the workshop with a nail where the other contract had been left.
“There’s a new order,” Abaddon then told him. “Care to look?”
The smith paused, looking half-way over his shoulder before rising and lifting a rag to his face. He was sweating from the heat of the ...boneforge? Curious. The man took the leaflet down and pulled a monocle to his eye, reading over the two words. “A tall order,” he grumbled. “So unreasonable, I can’t imagine what the Grand Marshall wants with these... more young men to march to their deaths, likely.”
“Isn’t that kind of talk treasonous?” Abaddon remarked.
”If that’s what I die from, I deserve it.”
Abaddon fell silent again, mystified by his mindset. “How do you plan to get the order done?”
”I have my ideas,” the old man said, brandishing one of the bone knives. “Maybe it’s best to forget.” Turning the knife upon himself, he angled it up towards the socket of his eye and began to carve, body shaking and jolting. How the man did not wake up then was a mystery to Abaddon, but perhaps, he thought, Ignis might already be missing an eye. Anything was a possibility in dreams after all, but that made the most sense. Some horrors were more effective than others, and what made one squirm might be a daily occurrence to another. Fear was such a complicated thing.
Scooping out his memories, he laid them out on the anvil, bright azure jewels tainted with motes of black smoke. It was such a depressing thing to witness, Abaddon growing bored as the man nursed his inner tragedies with such a small microcosm of creativity to be had for the world abound. Touching the man upon the shoulder, he imparted, to liven his own mood, an ailment. What better the suffering than constant hiccups? he thought, and so it came to be that the man shook with the gulping, feminine sound of a loud hiccup, doing so even in his sleep.
The man awoke a moment later to breathe in his old age, deprived of oxygen, so Abaddon found the dreamscape shifting back to his own. I’m not so in the mood to play cat and mouse with my imagination tonight, he told himself, and so he focused on the world beyond, the Veil., a mirrored landscape, a vast ocean of translucent material dotted with bubbles merging and vanishing in the skies above and below like a twisting tunnel of whirling images.
Used to the disorienting nature of the place by now and thus wandering the Veil that night with more curiosity than was usual, Abaddon’s eyes couldn’t help but stare out at the vast expanse of moving images, a sufferance worth of happy, sickening positive emotion dominating the vast majority of this realm. One by one he scanned them for subjects of interest, trying to find something that stood out. Someone was flying over a wondrous landscape, and he paused, standing at the edge.
His first instinct was to scorn them then, but something else laid hooks in his mind, and he found himself living vicariously through the image. Beautiful, actually. Watching along like someone watching their favorite television show, he sat there for perhaps a Break watching the sun set, wings flapping in a world that followed along and built itself to manifest the reality guided by a mind that sought freedom. It was a cathartic sense of relaxation that he felt he could scarcely get enough of. They are a bird. How liberating. Fantastic, really.
But, as he knew, reality tended to make one grounded. It’s a shame that I feel so compelled to bring it ruin. Must I ruin all of it? He held out his palm, a menacing black orb of sludge forming there in his hand, the outline of a writhing worm inside, a Nightmare. “Regrettable,” he groused, and tossed the black light skyward. It sailed through the air, streaking through the sky like a firework before smacking against the edge of the dream. Outside looking in, he watched the creature he’d summoned bleed through into the reality.
Instantly, things were different. Clouds formed, and rain began to fall. Darkness spread across the land, and flying grew to be more difficult. The inner fear took hold, and the wings could no longer grip the air to lift the body aloft. Plummeting, the nameless man fell to the earth with a thud, and there the Umbral Worm awaited him, its red glow paralyzing his body. Abaddon almost winced at the contrast, the avian body of the man shifting back to its natural humanity, complete with limitations and flaws without that idyllic freedom.
Entering his body, the worm tortured him to such a degree that Abaddon looked down in respect. “I am but the agent. I do as I must to survive,” he muttered from this point of conflicted morality. “The realm of Nightmares is where I work, night by night, and I am but a force of nature, carrying it onward.” Looking back to the man, he felt that grotesque connection now, between himself and the parasite as he reached out, squeezing his fist and imagining what small Corruption he would offer. It did not work, for Abaddon had already beset another with Kielik's curse moments ago. Curious, he thought.
Perhaps you will bring yourself injury if you are not careful, or maybe you will use that desire for freedom to bring about something interesting. Consider yourself lucky there is only so much of me to go around. Abaddon called to the worm, extracting it from the Dreamscape until it bled forth from the liquid surface of the dream and plopped to the mirrored floor, crawling to him and sinking into his body for later use.
The ends justified the means. “I will continue to be your hand in all this, Kielik,” he muttered to all of one who could perhaps hear.
