starter for [ @deadlynightshcde ]
Dinin's dreams were filled with death.
He could not decipher what was real and what was vision, caught between a fitful, restless reverie and waking hallucinations. The infection in his body raged. It was an unfamiliar one, born of surface bacteria, and his Underdark body was ill-prepared to combat it. For days, he wandered in and out of consciousness, but he was not fully present for anything. In his fits, he would stir from his dead stiffness, limbs thrashing, eyes wide with the phantom of some unseeable monster. And then he would settle again, back to his disorientation, back to the waking nightmare he found himself trapped in.
This was his first conscious thought in days. As he rose from the depths of his fever, other questions rose to his mind. How had he survived? Where was he? Who had tended to his wounds—
A short, choked gasp left the drow's mouth as he tried to sit up and found that he could not. Pain laced his muscles, forcing him down on the bed he was in. A bed that was drenched with his own sweat. His body was slick with it, so much so that Dinin wondered if he had been doused with a bucket of water. Bleary eyes looked around the room, trying to focus on the many shapeless forms but finding none that would reveal themselves to him. He felt weighted, sicker than he'd ever been before, but he was lucid.
A soft grunt, this time. Softly as he could, so as not to disturb whoever was in this room with him. He was certainly on the surface. He could tell by the smell. The atmosphere itself bore down on him, even safe inside whatever structure he found himself in. He had to force himself to his feet and return home. To what, he was not sure. A consequence for failing, no doubt. The thought only stilled him for a moment before he went back to trying to rise, willing his broken body to move, move, move.
He was not having much luck. Bones broken? Maybe. He couldn't tell. His body felt numbed and raw all in the same breath and he could not decipher the source of his ailments. Maybe if he were more alert, but the fever still had claws in him. He was so busy trying to get out of bed that he hadn't noticed someone else coming into the room.
