IN NIGHTMARES
Reseda's mind reached out. To her, all else would slow, cold, as if taking place in another world. The colors of this one would seem to fade, empty. It was as if nothing here mattered. It was transient. Dead. Those near her were but brief sparks, meaningless and with no place in the long and empty dark. Garbled speech flooded her consciousness, a nonstop, maddening rant that seemed as loud to her mind as thunder to the ears--and with it, sensations. Hunger, intense and savage enough to drive all else from the mind. Cunning sadism, as if the pain and fear of those around appeased that starvation. Twined into it all, wrapped in sinuous mind-tendrils of slick black, was a sensation of
otherness--this creature was wholly unnatural. Or was it Reseda who was unnatural..? Perhaps this darkness, this depth of nothing, was what was
true. These sensations are incredibly intense, even overwhelming.
"THE LUMBERING ANIMATA CORPORA HAD NO NAME AND HAD NOT BEEN DISCOVERED AS IT WAS NOT THAT OF A GOD CHISELLED BY THE FACT OF THEIR OWN FOOD FROM THE STARS SHONE WANLY HAD I HEARD HIM TELLING ME I CANNOT DO BETTER THAN QUOTE THE TEXT CUT MALUS PUTRID NIE DEAD WAS DARKLY MYSTERIOUS RATHER THAN GIVE IT IN THE DARK SHIP FROM COLD AND TWILIGHT SUSCITAT MORTUOS WHO ARE THE NAMELESS LARVAE OF THE GREAT ONES THEMSELVES ARE NOT UNREPRESENTED AND THE REVERSUS AB VIRA WERE NOT THERE IT WAS A GREAT BLACK STONE A DECIPHERING WHICH MIGHT POSSESS THE MOST DISTURBING OF ALL THIS WHILE THE DARK SHIP STEERED FOR TATTERED FOR SOLUM OCULI AND THE OTHER GODS AND THE COLD WASTE AND VULTUS COMEDAT CEREBELLA VIVENTIUM AND IT WAS NOT MUCH TO MY SECONDARY PURPOSE IN ADDRESSING YOU NAMELY TO URGE YOU TO SEEK THAT ANTEDILUVIAN DUSK-CITY WHICH IS YOURS NO POWER OR HABITATION ELSEWHERE--"
As her mind wallows in this--and perhaps breaks free, should she will it--it will be difficult to focus once more on reality, the colors only gradually seeming to return. Reseda may find that in the future, these
feelings return to her, unbidden: hopelessness. Despair. Hunger. Yet somehow, her cold nature will provide safe harbor to the sensations of cold
otherness, which may affect her personality or sanity over time, depending on how strongly she dwells upon it.
__________
ENGAGED: THE DREAMSTALKER
As the dragon inhaled his breath, Aries charged. His bulk hurtled horns-first into the strange figure, his thick skull crashing into the equine-looking body with a squelch, with a strange lack of resistance. It was as if the thing had no bones--and Aries felt something break within it, something wet and fragile that gave and popped at his impact.
Miru's paws struck next, and wherever they touched, the flesh seemed to give--the smoldering odor horrifically strong.
Zevruu would find that the flesh, too, was strangely wet and easy to tear--as if long-rotted, coming apart in his claws and in his teeth. The taste in his maw was unfathomably horrific--not unlike long-putrefied carrion left to rot in its own fluids.
It was then that the flame billowed down from above, engulfing the Dreamstalker almost wholly, bathing it in orange fire. The smoke billowed up black and thick, the rancid odor stronger now, burning hair and flesh and bone as the now-flaming thing flailed backward.
The Dreamstalker screeched at the combined assault, stumbling,
the sound an ear-splitting echoing sound that assaulted the minds of all present--possibly Reseda doubly so, if her mind-link remained open at this point.
Sensations of churning darkness, visions of unfathomable horror--beings consuming one another alive in a boiling black abyss--terror and hatred and fear. These filled the minds of its attackers, screaming and destructive. In self-defense, it swiped its talons at those before it--at the savage little fox that was charring its flesh with burning paws, at the ram with its massive horns, and at the brave, or foolish, spotted little cat that was tearing at it. The talons were long--sharp and thick and murderous. They were
killing claws, and no mistake.
THE DREAMSTALKER
