2nd of Ymiden, 719, immediately following this.
The Veil.
The Untold. The prismatic void, as he liked to think of it. How long did someone have to spend inside its vast, churning emptiness before they started to forget how abundantly wrong it was, he wondered idly as he walked through its space on a path made of nothing but his own thought. When he returned to Idalos - and it was a when, not an if - when he returned, would he find the real world forever dull and claustrophobic in comparison? Karem-forbid, he wondered, what if he spent too long in this place and started thinking of Idalos as the strange place. With only a floor to walk upon, the constant pangs of hunger, thirst, sleep. Remember to breathe, remember to blink. So many little things, so many rules, the prison of reality and normality. From an outside perspective they were downright oppressive. Then again, perhaps things would be different, if Emea wasn't also visibly broken and distorted horribly.
There were times the chaos cracked and crumbled. The colours would seep as cracks appeared in thin air, sometimes thin and spindly with barely a sliver of the blackness beyond visible through its unraveling strands. Sometimes huge. Incomprehensible. The outsides streaked webbing-like patterns of cracks and splinter for what seemed like miles, whole chunks of Emean landscape fracturing and dissolving away as they peeled from its surface like wet paint. Staring into those openings felt as though he was staring into... his future. Impossibly deep and impossibly wide, it was everything that Emea was, but colourless, lightless, soundless. He didn't dare to stare at those gaps in reality for more than a split-second. They filled his mind with incredibly uncomfortable questions. Was that what awaited him, should he fail? ... Was that where he'd been, in those brief moments of nothingness between death and resurrection?
Emea, the true Emea, this vast and unceasing chaos, broken and warped by their failure in the Cathedral of Dreams, wasn't a place for mortals. That single truth hammered its way home into his skull with every creeping minute. He needed a moment to ground himself, a.. just a brief respite. Almost as if in answer, a gentle melody touched his ears. A quiet, distant noise that seemed to stretch across Emea. So faint he could have imagined that he'd simply not heard it up until that moment because he wasn't looking for it. A chorus of voices, mixed with soft beats in a wandering, almost lazy rhythm, meandering constantly between different themes in a way that perfectly mirrored the chaotic nature of Emea itself. He could have even mistaken it for one of the strange rhythms that fluctuated in and out of the prismatic void at random moments, ambushing him when he least expected it, but those noises came from everywhere at once, echoing inside his skull. This... this came from a direction. But not one that he'd ever felt, or understood before.
Up, down, left, right, forward, back. Those, he understood. But never before had he felt the directions 'in' or 'out'. There was no door before him, there never had been, yet as he tried to follow that noise, to follow its direction, he felt something appear. A tiny opening, just about big enough to slip through should he dare, like the crack of a barely-open door. A way out. He took it - and felt himself sliding backwards, the Untold as a whole somehow pulling backwards as if he was staring at it from above. Its colours grew less vibrant and saturated, the unbridled chaos settling into a more restrained and organised form... but the cracks and tears grew in both size and volume, rending the fabric of reality right before his eyes, splintering the void until it looked as if two giant hands had descended upon it, gripped it at either end and pulled until it split like torn cotton. He was no longer in the Untold, where Vri had tossed him. For the first time, he'd descended between dimensions, and entered whatever sorry excuse remained of The Veil. The melody swelled but it kept calling for him, deeper down, deeper, until...
He was dreaming.
Annoyingly, he was still a wolf, and despite knowing that he was dreaming, there wasn't anything he could do about it. His paws shuffled through chunks of rubble strewn across the cobblestone street as he walked, trying to identify the buildings scattered around him by their skeletal remains. He was in a city, but which? Rharne? Rynmere? Scalvoris? Squint hard enough and he could see aspects of all three, the wide thoroughfares, rolling up and down with the landscape, flanked by a mishmash of buildings both tall and squat that complimented one-another in a strange but charming fashion. Once, it would have been a wonderful thing, but now the wooden beams that held them together had burned to cinders; the stone shattered and rubble piled in heaps, strewn haphazardly across the cityscape. Overhead, the clouds were dark and foreboding, and a thin layer of ash clung to everything - hell, it even hung in the air, little flecks of it dancing before his nose and getting caught in his fur, though it was difficult to see anything through the dense black smoke. Nir'wei wrinkled his nose and tried not to smell any of it, but when he inhaled, all he could sense was the cleansing scent of morning grass, flecked with dew. What an odd place. But something told him it hadn't always been like this.
"Behind us." The others had come with him, and this time it was Cold that spoke, his voice as firm and icy as his name. Nir spun, and everything clicked as his eyes traced the outline of a smoking volcano, its tip still bubbling with red lava. It'd erupted. The landscape had been torn apart by rocks and earthquakes alone, but the next wave would be coming soon. One that would bury this city so deep that its existence would be scratched from the history books, its location scored from maps. The faint cries of the last survivors would be smothered forever.
Out of one chaos and into another. "Split up and search for the survivors." The city was already in ruins and attempting to salvage its remains was a lost cause now. The only thing left to do was to save those they could and take them somewhere safe... but the moans of pain and pleading seemed to come from everywhere at once; the smoke made it impossible to pick up any scents, and no matter how he ran through the ruins, his pack disappearing in various directions and reappearing whenever they met dead ends, steep rockslides, fallen buildings too large and jagged to get around, they didn't grow any closer. "Hello?" No voices called back, no cries for help, just screams. Moans. Distant crying, lost in mourning. The people here were simply too broken to wish for saving now. The volcano belched another thick plume of smoke, and the world shook in fear as lava, hot and thick, splurged from its top, dribbling down the side in a hot mass until it split into smaller rivers and streams.
What was his purpose here? If he couldn't save these people, if he couldn't do something. Was he here to watch? A silent observer to the city's dying breath? Was this really just another nightmare?
Lava poured over the remains of taverns, houses, the crumbling city's outer walls. Screams rose in pitch, briefly, before cracking and dying to an eerie silence. Even though he couldn't see the last survivors, his mind's eye was filled with images, his imagination running wild and the final screams of the damned providing ample kindling. By the end, there was nobody left but him, and the lava kept swelling, a constant and never-ending stream that threatened to consume not only the ruined city, but the world beyond. It swallowed him too, and he screamed from the burns, the searing heat that melted everything that he was. A second death.
Then, he opened his eyes, and he was back where he started, standing on the ruined cobblestones of the thoroughfare with the moans and cries of invisible innocents rising all around. "... What the..." The dream should have ended - it always ended - when he died. That was to be expected. Only... he wasn't really dreaming. He had no body to return to, no place on Idalos to wake up. He was within the dream, body and mind... and therefore the dream would not end until he either fixed whatever was happening, or until he found a way back out again. Whatever that was. The song that had led him here still played faintly in his ears, a constant harmonious melody that haunted the bleak landscape and faded under the cries and moans of innocents, but it wasn't coming from any particular direction anymore. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once, an ebbing, wailing noise. He couldn't use it to lead himself back out again... and without that, he had no other way to leave.
With a sudden sensation of deep dread, he realised he was trapped within the dream.
While in a ticking race-against-the-clock to find the Great Beyond.
If he didn't find a way out, a way to fix this twisted landscape, it might just become his final resting place for real.
And behind him, the volcano gurgled ominously, growing ready to erupt, and bury him under a searing faux-death again.
The Veil.
The Untold. The prismatic void, as he liked to think of it. How long did someone have to spend inside its vast, churning emptiness before they started to forget how abundantly wrong it was, he wondered idly as he walked through its space on a path made of nothing but his own thought. When he returned to Idalos - and it was a when, not an if - when he returned, would he find the real world forever dull and claustrophobic in comparison? Karem-forbid, he wondered, what if he spent too long in this place and started thinking of Idalos as the strange place. With only a floor to walk upon, the constant pangs of hunger, thirst, sleep. Remember to breathe, remember to blink. So many little things, so many rules, the prison of reality and normality. From an outside perspective they were downright oppressive. Then again, perhaps things would be different, if Emea wasn't also visibly broken and distorted horribly.
There were times the chaos cracked and crumbled. The colours would seep as cracks appeared in thin air, sometimes thin and spindly with barely a sliver of the blackness beyond visible through its unraveling strands. Sometimes huge. Incomprehensible. The outsides streaked webbing-like patterns of cracks and splinter for what seemed like miles, whole chunks of Emean landscape fracturing and dissolving away as they peeled from its surface like wet paint. Staring into those openings felt as though he was staring into... his future. Impossibly deep and impossibly wide, it was everything that Emea was, but colourless, lightless, soundless. He didn't dare to stare at those gaps in reality for more than a split-second. They filled his mind with incredibly uncomfortable questions. Was that what awaited him, should he fail? ... Was that where he'd been, in those brief moments of nothingness between death and resurrection?
Emea, the true Emea, this vast and unceasing chaos, broken and warped by their failure in the Cathedral of Dreams, wasn't a place for mortals. That single truth hammered its way home into his skull with every creeping minute. He needed a moment to ground himself, a.. just a brief respite. Almost as if in answer, a gentle melody touched his ears. A quiet, distant noise that seemed to stretch across Emea. So faint he could have imagined that he'd simply not heard it up until that moment because he wasn't looking for it. A chorus of voices, mixed with soft beats in a wandering, almost lazy rhythm, meandering constantly between different themes in a way that perfectly mirrored the chaotic nature of Emea itself. He could have even mistaken it for one of the strange rhythms that fluctuated in and out of the prismatic void at random moments, ambushing him when he least expected it, but those noises came from everywhere at once, echoing inside his skull. This... this came from a direction. But not one that he'd ever felt, or understood before.
Up, down, left, right, forward, back. Those, he understood. But never before had he felt the directions 'in' or 'out'. There was no door before him, there never had been, yet as he tried to follow that noise, to follow its direction, he felt something appear. A tiny opening, just about big enough to slip through should he dare, like the crack of a barely-open door. A way out. He took it - and felt himself sliding backwards, the Untold as a whole somehow pulling backwards as if he was staring at it from above. Its colours grew less vibrant and saturated, the unbridled chaos settling into a more restrained and organised form... but the cracks and tears grew in both size and volume, rending the fabric of reality right before his eyes, splintering the void until it looked as if two giant hands had descended upon it, gripped it at either end and pulled until it split like torn cotton. He was no longer in the Untold, where Vri had tossed him. For the first time, he'd descended between dimensions, and entered whatever sorry excuse remained of The Veil. The melody swelled but it kept calling for him, deeper down, deeper, until...
He was dreaming.
Annoyingly, he was still a wolf, and despite knowing that he was dreaming, there wasn't anything he could do about it. His paws shuffled through chunks of rubble strewn across the cobblestone street as he walked, trying to identify the buildings scattered around him by their skeletal remains. He was in a city, but which? Rharne? Rynmere? Scalvoris? Squint hard enough and he could see aspects of all three, the wide thoroughfares, rolling up and down with the landscape, flanked by a mishmash of buildings both tall and squat that complimented one-another in a strange but charming fashion. Once, it would have been a wonderful thing, but now the wooden beams that held them together had burned to cinders; the stone shattered and rubble piled in heaps, strewn haphazardly across the cityscape. Overhead, the clouds were dark and foreboding, and a thin layer of ash clung to everything - hell, it even hung in the air, little flecks of it dancing before his nose and getting caught in his fur, though it was difficult to see anything through the dense black smoke. Nir'wei wrinkled his nose and tried not to smell any of it, but when he inhaled, all he could sense was the cleansing scent of morning grass, flecked with dew. What an odd place. But something told him it hadn't always been like this.
"Behind us." The others had come with him, and this time it was Cold that spoke, his voice as firm and icy as his name. Nir spun, and everything clicked as his eyes traced the outline of a smoking volcano, its tip still bubbling with red lava. It'd erupted. The landscape had been torn apart by rocks and earthquakes alone, but the next wave would be coming soon. One that would bury this city so deep that its existence would be scratched from the history books, its location scored from maps. The faint cries of the last survivors would be smothered forever.
Out of one chaos and into another. "Split up and search for the survivors." The city was already in ruins and attempting to salvage its remains was a lost cause now. The only thing left to do was to save those they could and take them somewhere safe... but the moans of pain and pleading seemed to come from everywhere at once; the smoke made it impossible to pick up any scents, and no matter how he ran through the ruins, his pack disappearing in various directions and reappearing whenever they met dead ends, steep rockslides, fallen buildings too large and jagged to get around, they didn't grow any closer. "Hello?" No voices called back, no cries for help, just screams. Moans. Distant crying, lost in mourning. The people here were simply too broken to wish for saving now. The volcano belched another thick plume of smoke, and the world shook in fear as lava, hot and thick, splurged from its top, dribbling down the side in a hot mass until it split into smaller rivers and streams.
What was his purpose here? If he couldn't save these people, if he couldn't do something. Was he here to watch? A silent observer to the city's dying breath? Was this really just another nightmare?
Lava poured over the remains of taverns, houses, the crumbling city's outer walls. Screams rose in pitch, briefly, before cracking and dying to an eerie silence. Even though he couldn't see the last survivors, his mind's eye was filled with images, his imagination running wild and the final screams of the damned providing ample kindling. By the end, there was nobody left but him, and the lava kept swelling, a constant and never-ending stream that threatened to consume not only the ruined city, but the world beyond. It swallowed him too, and he screamed from the burns, the searing heat that melted everything that he was. A second death.
Then, he opened his eyes, and he was back where he started, standing on the ruined cobblestones of the thoroughfare with the moans and cries of invisible innocents rising all around. "... What the..." The dream should have ended - it always ended - when he died. That was to be expected. Only... he wasn't really dreaming. He had no body to return to, no place on Idalos to wake up. He was within the dream, body and mind... and therefore the dream would not end until he either fixed whatever was happening, or until he found a way back out again. Whatever that was. The song that had led him here still played faintly in his ears, a constant harmonious melody that haunted the bleak landscape and faded under the cries and moans of innocents, but it wasn't coming from any particular direction anymore. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once, an ebbing, wailing noise. He couldn't use it to lead himself back out again... and without that, he had no other way to leave.
With a sudden sensation of deep dread, he realised he was trapped within the dream.
While in a ticking race-against-the-clock to find the Great Beyond.
If he didn't find a way out, a way to fix this twisted landscape, it might just become his final resting place for real.
And behind him, the volcano gurgled ominously, growing ready to erupt, and bury him under a searing faux-death again.
