A knight walks through an indeterminable landscape, dark and so still that even the air seems absent. Dairwych realizes himself in the darkness, and continues on as he had before. Then the voices start.There’s a discordant chaos all around him, a slowly growing cacophony of words, thoughts, feelings, none of which are his own. He changes direction, moving more quickly to bring as much distance as he can between himself and the invasive entities. He senses that somehow, they would find and ensnare him from the inside out.Dairwych begins to run. The chaos does not recede in his wake, though he feels it coalesce from the aether behind him, writhing with power from an impossible height. It’s then he notices the air is no longer vacant, but heavy and cold. Snow had begun to fall, and he feels the impression of raised earth under him.
The Shiverpeaks.He dares then to chance the entity a backwards glance, and standing in the void is the Mother Tree herself, her bark squirming like shriveling worms, her endless branches stretched against the sky overhead. The image scalds his eyes, the sound deafens his ears, and in that instance terror takes him. Dairwych flees into the pure white snow, his screams silent under the Tree’s own.His eyes open, and take in the unmistakable heart of the Grove. He clutches his chest, an instinct not fully understood. His discarded helm rests a few feet away, an inexplicable distance.A soft sound encompasses the clearing. Laughter. Another voice, delicate and distant. Singular, distinct. Feminine.Suddenly, Dairwych is aware of a woman standing beside him. She extends a hand to him, warm and green. Upon taking it, the air turns cool and white, and he realizes they’ve returned to the Shiverpeaks. “As long as you don’t look back, she can’t find you here.”“But where can we go?” Dairwych asks, uncomfortably aware of the canopy consuming every horizon. Her leaves have closed in around the mountains, and though they’re still now, they echo with the whispers of unseen entities. “Do not worry, sweetling. There is another way. Over the braches, through the leaves. We will reach the other side.”A sudden surge of curiosity brings him to regard the leaves in a new light. A shield not against the world beyond, but a barrier. A prison. A swelling in his chest anguishes with undeniable longing for that world, in all its pain and beauty, unhindered and uncensored. But when he turns to ask the woman, Dairwych finds he’s alone again.The leaves rustle, conveying a fragile and permeable quality. He realizes his hands now grip the hilt of his greatsword, the strange blue steel shimmering white flame as he brings it near the encasing canopy. He realizes he has one option.Black sap pours from the first severing, sizzling away with the white flame of his sword. Empowered by the thought of freedom, he strikes again. The voices erupt, screaming and cursing him by name, assailing him with vengeful protest as the leaves shatter in the wake of his blade. The knight deafens himself to their condemnations and numbs himself to the pain their cries bring with each strike. He allows their rage to feed his own, and press him through the agonizing task until there is nothing left.Nothing left but darkness.Dairwych tightens his grip on the sword, though the bright flame’s light is suffocated in the twisting abyss he finds himself in. The voices burst from below him, gnashing and damning, and its then he realizes he is falling. A terror unlike any he has imagined grips his being, but before he can find the breath to scream, a solitary voice eclipses the others..“It only hurts for a short while, until you open your eyes.”He wants to reply, tell her his eyes are already open, but the world seems to stop in time..And Dairwych awakens.
