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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 8, 2020 16:24:19 GMT
Life in the Mist is hardship personified, but Ragnarrion and his family have made it just fine these last six years. With Ingriwindl and his son Yorn and young daughter Kjell, they make a loving restoring the enchanted weapons of Old Canderlin they find hidden in dark barrows or destroyed towns, then sending them back to Azuria for the outfitting of ever more powerful adventuring groups seeking to reclaim the continent. Ingriwindl’s powerful sorcery keeps them safe and hidden.
At least that’s how she remembers it. By an elf’s reckoning twenty nine years old is but a child, but It’s easy to grow up fast when you’ve got a purpose. And every time she closes her eyes she sees hers anew. And in the greatest tragedy an elf of Innuria can suffer...her nemesis is in the shape all elves consider sacred, that of a great Azurian oak.
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 8, 2020 20:00:25 GMT
The Mist is never in her dreams. She had grown up in it, breathed it for years, knew the slight chill it brought like she knew the shape of her hand. But when it came to dreams, it was as though she’d never heard of it. Her home and the valley it overlooked were clear in her dream, unimpeded by the endlessly obscuring fog. The books that bubbled down the mountains were clean and cold and clear, little fish hunting insects, deer lapping up the water as though nothing has ever come here before.
Then of course lurked the Maentwrog. Its thirty five meter height blocked out the southern exit to her valley, its huge black eye watching her as she slept. “When are you coming my dear?” It spoke into her mind. “They miss you, you know.”
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Post by Kjell Ó Raghallaigh on Jul 8, 2020 20:26:38 GMT
Kjell woke with a start. The voice in her head had sent a shiver down her spine. She wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. She still had all her fingers.
It was always the birdsong that gave it away. She had already had this dream hundreds of times before and would likely have it hundreds of times more.
She picked up her rifle and rose, taking a deep breath. The pale fucker would always be behind her. She could walk off and never look back or chop at it with her axe or go around it, all the way down to the valley, or roll to the other side and keep sleeping; no matter what she chose to do, it would always be there.
She gripped the gun. It was weightless. She remembered prying it from a dead human's hands. It was heavy then. She didn't have all her fingers then.
This was a dream and even though she couldn't wake herself from it, she could change things. Like the fire rate of her gun. She turned around and began squeezing the trigger, sending round after round at its horrible gaping eye.
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 8, 2020 21:22:21 GMT
The shots peeled off soundlessly, no recoil, no smoke, a pale imitation of a real gunshot. The hits strike the great beast over and over, and to her surprise it actually shrinks back a bit initially. She felt a cold bit of satisfaction. Her aim in sleep as in life had steadily improved.
“Do you...” it laughed its awful burbling laugh, like it had phlegm stuffing its throat up. Did it have a throat? “You hid like a whipped dog,” the Maentwrog taunted. “And i feasted. “Do you want to see what really happened my dear? Do you think I was a freak accident? Do you think this is truly a dream? I can show you anything. My own name means fortune teller in an older tongue. I’m sure you don’t need to be a seer to know your fate when we meet again. Would you like to see?”
Kjell felt the wind blowing her hair gently, saw the other figure that haunted her dreams. The Huntsman. The shadow she knew existed but he not truly seen that night. The one who had doomed her family.
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Post by Kjell Ó Raghallaigh on Jul 8, 2020 21:46:56 GMT
She shot the rifle a couple more times until it came up empty, almost as if the rounds had ran out because she'd run out of will. She turned the gun around in her hands and, holding it by its barrel, began smashing it on a nearby rock. When it finally broke into pieces, she threw the remains away with a frustrated scream. She noticed the Huntsman out of the corner of her eye, but paid him no mind. "Fine. Show me," she said, trying to catch her breath. She ran her fingers through her hair and the bleeding stumps that had been her fourth and fifth finger just moments ago left crimson streaks on her forehead and in her hair. "SHOW ME!"
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 8, 2020 22:10:24 GMT
The demon tree’s branches extended to form a skull, the trunk a single giant tooth. Before she could react one limb shot across the valley, an impossibly long reach, and it wrapped around her body snug as a glove and pulled her in towards it. Any control she had over this...dream? Vision? Hallucination? Had faded, and she inexorably is pulled into the gaping hole the Maentwrog uses as an eye.
It’s humid inside, sweaty, the smell of death and rotting logs everywhere. The limb imprisoning her holds her a few feet off the ground. The inside of the demon is impossibly large, a hundred meter circle, fifty times the actual width of the creature somehow. Maybe it was, indeed, a true gateway to hell. Two little twigs split off and hold her eyes open wide as a silvery flame rises from the strange walls.
She sees her brother at the brook, fishing for trout. The Maentwrog lumbered by, lazily plodding along toward its favorite lake. In front of it rose two horsemen Kjell has never seen, bows on their backs. One noticed the lad as he went to hide and pointed, and the great tree turned and saw. Before he could react the roots came from the earth and swallowed him up and the tree had another fruit.
The horsemen laughed and one suddenly stopped, then fell off his strange black horse, turning to ash even as he fell. Kjell saw her mother’s hands ringed with fire as she turned toward the other man, before the Maentwrog’s small branches reached out and entwined themselves in her fingers, then her mouth, then everywhere an opening could be found, and a sickening red flood erupted as they drank every drop of blood from her body.
She knew her father had been hiding her while this happened, and he had placed the heavy rock over her cave when the Maentwrog found him. His axe found purchase on the beast’s flesh, and the demon shuddered as the enchanted whitesteel blows cut in again and again. Then the second horsemen drew his bow back and an arrow landed out, expanding as it flew until it became some great canine’s mouth, and with a crunch her father was no more, his axe falling into the brook, and the demon and the huntsman continued their grim trek towards water and the other houses hidden among the valley’s caves and nooks.
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Post by Kjell Ó Raghallaigh on Jul 9, 2020 16:49:28 GMT
Kjell trashed against her confines up until her brother died. She hadn't cried for them in years, but when she saw that done to her mother, she felt a bitter sting behind her eyes. By the time the thing got to her father, she was sobbing.
When it was done, she looked down at the blurry rotten logs for a long time. Long enough so that her breathing had evened and the logs were no longer blurry. There was no reasoning with this thing. No bargaining. It didn't have a why. She looked up and inspected the interior of this thing. It had never occurred to her before now, but... "Are you feeding on me right now?" she asked.
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 9, 2020 17:13:55 GMT
The Maentwrog laughed its phlegmatic laugh. “No my dear girl,” it said. “I am seasoning you. Marinating your soul with all the flavors of sadness and rage and despair. Aging you like a fine red wine to bring out the full bouquet of your torment. You have rage to drive you. I have seen the day will come when your anger drives you back to me, and that shall be the day I can feast as never before. Your family was...like peeling a potato prior to making a stew. Preparation work for the banquet to come. Do bring some friends, for I do enjoy a good appetizer.” The branches moved all along her as it spoke, writhing and poking and caressing.
As the demon spoke, Kjell saw it losing form in the strange basement and the dream came more under her control again. The power it had used to bring her this close had weakened it temporarily.
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Post by Kjell Ó Raghallaigh on Jul 9, 2020 17:53:37 GMT
As soon as she realised its power was waning, she began kicking at it to get free of its disgusting grasp. "I'm not bringing you anyone, you fuck!" she hissed. "And when that day comes, the only one feasting will be me after I've chopped you down to firewood, you fucking log!" For some reason, it was very difficult for Kjell in that moment to find a clever way to insult a tree.
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 9, 2020 18:00:55 GMT
The Maentwrog reared back and spat her out as she kicked and fought, but for once it seemed a reaction to actual pain as opposed to a taunt. She lands next to her father’s fallen axe in the brook, and she sees the goateed man looking at her with what might be respect. She blinks and he’s gone and for now so is the Maentwrog. The valley is hers once more.
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Post by Kjell Ó Raghallaigh on Jul 9, 2020 18:29:27 GMT
She picked up the axe and chucked it at the man, but it flied through empty air.
She rose and went to pick up the axe. She ran her fingers along its blade, ignoring her bleeding stumps. "Where are you?" she whispered to it. As she turned her back to the sun, the dream began to fade away.
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