#mordemoth

[floret-fiction]

In the Dream

Inner chamber fight

Blue part of Caladbolg as a seed or a cone

would be more balanced

[commander-madnarim]

-The Death of the Jungle Dragon 

[ellietwopointoh-blog]

Just ran into this gem again.

WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE.

[chougenjitsutekina]

Springing the Trap

Unfortunately, there was no enemy. Nobody who could see Sohothin, either. In fun’s place stood a gangly young blindfolded human, a third generation Canthan implant from Kryta named Yoshihiro Kage, stood meek and worried before Rytlock. He looked off blankly into the distance from behind his veil, oblivious to the sword inches from his face.                “G-gosh, Master Brimstone, y’know it’s awfully hot in here.  You got a fire going?”

“No.”

“Can I take this thing off my head?”

“No.”

Rytlock pulled a chair out of the mists and, with a quick stomp of his hindpaw, Kage was in it.  Rytlock had very little time to rest nowadays, and he wasn’t about to give it to an incompetent trainee so easily. Kage was a troublesome student: a master of the sword and staff for sure, but a complete scatterbrain.  His mind was one which lacked discipline, even for a human. And this was merely the last in a long line of annoyances from some human cub, who improvised weapon drills during martial training and who repeatedly complained that he couldn’t see the mists well when he kept taking his blindfold off. It was two in the morning. There would be a damn good reason, or there would be a damn good punishment.

“Um, so anyway sir, I… uh…“

“Spit it out.”

“I-I’ve been hearing a voice.”

Rytlock took a deep breath. It would be poor for the renewal of the pact if a high ranking Charr were to murder a human.

“Well, congratulations. You’re a Revenant. It’s very early in the morning. I would rather be asleep. What do you want, human?”

“Well, it… he says he knows you. His name is Trah-horn or something?”

Rytlock was listening now.

“Trahearne. His name was Trahearne. What does he want with a cub like you?”

“I… I don’t know. He said something about… the Mists? I have a headache. I’m sorry sir. He just seemed important.”

“Ugh. Let me go talk to him.”

Rytlock searched his vision for Traehearne. Mists swirled in around his mind and it was as though he was back in his dreams, vague shapes and forms coalescing into pathways and faces. It was the hardest part of teaching a revenant because It was the hardest part of being a revenant; the mists swirled and reality formed and unformed at its own whims. To channel the mists through your mind was to willingly throw your mind away, to let reality break into a million little pieces and to do the dirty work of piecing them, through memories of scents and feelings of moments and ideas of people, back together into a cohesive whole. It was as if Rytlock was forcing himself into a grand state of psychosis again and again, giving himself schizophrenia just in the hopes that the voices in his decaying mind might tell him something useful. It was a lifestyle that had been working for him so far, but every now and then a hint of insanity flickered out to him from within that misty labyrinth, and always he felt the great migraine of his fleshy mortal body pumping blood into and out of his brain, the wear and tear of doing so much mental exercise.  

That was the bad part of his new magical skill, Rytlock mused, but also the good part. He didn’t have to look around, or to get directions as he paved a path through reality directly to Trahearne’s presence.  The Sylvari holed himself up in a lonely, vast temple. Proud glass, stained with images of human kings and gods, found themselves sprawling themselves around and around in a spiral toward the heavens, and the faint sound of water can be heard beneath the marble floors. At the center of the room stood a proud Statue to the human goddess Melandru. Trahearne seemed trapped in a memory of his destiny, his wyld hunt guiding his mind even as he and it fade into history, his guided thoughts building a shelter out of themselves in the chaos of life after life. The shocking bit for Rytlock was never the architecture or the psychology behind it, but that the dead always looked shocked to be in his presence. Aeons passed for Trahearne since he had last seen Rytlock. In Tyrian time, it was only a pair of months, but the mists don’t operate in Tyrian time. Even knowing this, it’s still a shock to brace yourself for, being greeted so coldly and distantly by the dead. Which is what made Trahearne’s warm smile all the more jarring. Trahearne’s smile was big, and friendly, but there was something not quite right with it. It was as though it was too friendly.

“Rytlock! It’s good to see you! I was hoping someone would come by sooner or later. We’ve much to discuss!”

“Yeah, well… I dunno what weird concept of time you have, but it’s early in the morning for me and I’d much rather have talked to you after getting a good night’s sleep. Right now, I’m tired. What do you want with the living?”

Trahearne seemed puzzled at Rytlock’s general , but he continued.

“Let’s step outside! There’ve been some… troubles. With the Mists.”

“Troubles?”

“You’ll see!”

               Trahearne led Rytlock to a pair of large, seemingly immovable doors and, with a short wave of magic, flung them open. Weaving together a memory of Caladbolg in his hand, he drew the sword forth into existence, and motioned for Rytlock to do the same. While the temple itself seemed pristine, the Orr around it was crumbling. Green overgrowths cracked the streets and broke the buildings around them for miles, the hazed, clouded Orrian skyline Rytlock had known in reality replaced with a dense canopy of grand trees and tangled vines. The shore was dotted with itzel villages and roaming saurian, and, looking in the other direction, the spires of Arah were instead a massive throbbing growth. A single entity, pulsating and swirling around, tangled up within itself and constantly unknotting itself, with flowers and vines, trees, blooms all towering skyward into a great morass. At moments, you could see a head at the end of a vine or two. It was a giant dragon.

               “So I suppose you’ve already figured out what’s going on, here.”

               “Bad dreams?”

               Traehearne laughed. It was a laugh without hope, the kind of laugh lunatics laugh when they know things they weren’t meant to know. The kind of laugh carried a burden with it, and Trahearne’s joyless eyes punctuated each ha that left his mouth like they were shooting the sound out of the sky. In other words, it was just the kind of laugh to put Rytlock on edge.  

               “More of a nightmare, really. You know how the elder dragons consume and corrupt magic?”

               A brief flash of panic hit Rytlock. Was Trahearne’s soul corrupted? Was he the one doing this? He eyed Trahearne wearily, but otherwise did nothing. If anything, he was at least able to snap away back into reality. Channeling one’s mind through the mists at least had the benefit of an easy escape. He could come back with firepower later. He was too tired for this kind of nonsense.

               “Look, if you do anything to me, well—you can’t. I’m just a projection. My body lies elsewhere.”

               Trahearne was again confused at Rytlock’s hostility. He put his weapon down and, as though in an a display of surrender, stepped back toward the temple gates. Rytlock reluctantly walked with Trahearne back into the temple.

               “I know my passing into this realm from yours was under less than trustworthy circumstances, but I promise, me and those in the pact who dwell here have been extra careful. I’m constantly channeling all the magic I have into keeping myself safe, Rytlock.” Trahearne was terse in a way that seemed like he was trying to force earnestness out of himself and failing. Even at such great danger, it was understandably difficult for the dead to muster much lively care. Not that he didn’t care, but he struggled as best he could to let Rytlock see it in him as he spoke.  Rytlock wanted none of it.

“Look. Just what the hell was that out there?”

Traehearne was silent for a bit. He quickly led Rytlock downstairs.His stiff warmness faded and finally, safe in the memory of the artesian waters, life seemed to reenter his expression. It was as though he was afraid to be himself anywhere else, and now, cocooned into his safe place, the bags under Trahearne’s eyes.

               “Mordremoth and Zhaitan live in the Mists now. Before, when they lived on Tyria—chained to Tyria, they were simply our problem. But now, the Mists, the whole universe… the multiverse… everything… We’ve made a mistake, Rytlock.”

               Rytlock was surprisingly calm. His brain would process the trauma later, he thought. But if someone wanted to find a way to wake him up, great grinding gears, they found it. He looked upward out the cellar windows in the church basement and saw bright sunlight outside. He laughed, undisturbed in his disturbance, a laugh with warmth and without joy.

               “Well! Well this is just great! Just great. Well! It’s glad to know you’re okay, buddy. We should hang out again sometime. You want me to send you some recruits?”

               “Ha! I… I would Just let them come at their own time. We can keep running for now. There’s a lot of room to run out here. Apatia and Tybalt, I think, have been leading some guerilla offensives out in… somewhere. But mostly, um. Mostly I’ll keep running. ”

               “That’s just great! Good! You keep up the good run, salad boy. “ Rytlock and Traehearne shared a warm smile with each other, this time, one of joy, the joy forged in the knowledge that doom is at least a mutual feeling. Traehearne nodded.  Rytlock readied himself to dissolve back into his body, to leave the reality of the mists and shock himself back into Tyria. But before he could, a thought kept him in Traehearne’s presence.

               “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have asked one of my aspirants to send me here, have you?”

               Trahearne was again puzzled. Rytlock was assuming a lot of things about him.

               “You have aspirants?”

               “Yeah,” Rytlock said, a shudder of panic returning to his spine immediately. “And I guess Mordremoth wants me to send one over to you as a present.” He snarled, focused his mind, and…

… Rytlock jolted awake, the rustling of entry drowned in roar and the cackling of flame.  It was two in the morning and he’d be damned if someone were to catch him in his tent. In a small camp, secluded in the depths of the Woodland Cascades, the war against Mordremoth thundered once more.

[vascurie]