No Rest For The Wicked

When you arrive back at camp, shortly after Zeitsya, you find things to be much as you left them. That is with the exception of one thing, or rather one person, Rigga. No longer asleep, she is busily stuffing her little face full of blackberries from one of the bushes you had practiced on earlier. You hadn't paid very much attention to it before, but now you can't help but notice, the berries were of exceptional size for such a typically small fruit. This attribute made your stomach gurgle insistently, reminding you yet again of your having not eaten for a considerable amount of time. Having apparently heard the grumbling in your belly, Rigga acknowledges your presence with a broad and berry-stained smile, "Doo youu wunt sshummm?" She says, her speech garbled by a mouthful of the presumably delicious berries. She immediately gulps down the masticated matter and smiles cheerily at you. She strikes you as childlike sometimes to a certain degree, and now more so than ever. "When I first woke up I was practically starving, I was almost tempted to eat the bark right off of the trees!" She says as she reaches out to grab another handful of the food, "Then I rolled over and I saw these overgrown blackberry bushes! Isn't it remarkable to see berries so healthy this late in the year! They look plenty large enough to feed us both, have some." She finishes and extends a hand to you, offering you some of the plump fruit. With a heavy thump you plop down beside her, and take one of the large berries from her grasp. The familiar taste of the sweet and sour berries causes your mouth to water uncontrollably while you pick handfuls of the fruits. "I actually had something to do with that." You say, in between mouthfuls. "Oh? Do tell." She says, only half interested in you, the other half of her mind clearly preoccupied with her meal.

"Perhaps another time my love." You say before shoveling scoops of the berries into your mouth. Her reddened cheeks betray a measure of affection in response to your mention of the word love. You hadn't spoken to her like that before, not so directly. You always called her by her name or by the title she held in your public life as your mate, but never had you called her by the title she held in your heart. She offers no word of response, and plainly continues stuff her flushed cheeks continually. Your own reckless, hungry, abandon nearly becomes your undoing as you find yourself quickly bloated by the feast of berries. At least you have Rigga to share this discomfort with, she lies back against a tree, with the green look of indigestion on her face. It isn't long before the sound of your people as they wake breaks the relatively quiet stillness of the glen with the sounds of sighing and stretching and groaning aloud. When you look out across the glen something strange catches your eye, you catch sight of a tiny and translucent creature scuttling about busily on top of Inslod's head a short distance off. The little arachnid frantically wanders about for a moment, palpitating over this and that before a now awoken Inslod decides to pluck it off of himself and sit it on the ground. Then he carefully lifts a nearby rock and pulls something from underneath it, in short order he dangles a large worm of some sort in front of the hatchling spider. Without hesitation the newborn arachnid pounces on the helpless worm and strikes a lethal blow before it begins encasing it in a silvery-white cocoon. The little creatures vigor appears to please Inslod, causing a faint smile to cross his face, it was the familiar grin that a parent wears when their child has accomplished anything remarkable. In short order, the spider drags off its swaddled victim into the large pouch on Inslod's back.

It was truly strange to see a man behave in such a way with regard to a creature so possessed of natural aggression. In every way that you could imagine, Inslod and that little hatchling were complete and total opposites. On one hand was Inslod the Observant, a generally calm and rational man, with a love for peace and knowledge wherever it might be found. On the other was the frenzied little hatchling beast, an unlearned, ****, careless, violent, and deadly creature. While in time the tiny Pine Widow hatchling might come to be more intelligent and less careless, it's **** and cunning would only grow along with its mass. At the moment whether or not Inslod would keep the beast was none of your concern, ultimately you don't believe that the little pine widow and Inslod would be a compatible pair for very long. As your stomach settles and more of your people awake, you at long last begin to drift off into a midday slumber. A chill, almost hiemal, wind brings you back to reality for but a moment before your leaden eyelids at last fall shut. Immediately you find yourself under attack, not by any foe made of mere flesh, but by phantasmagoric visions and cruel shadows cast by things you know nothing of. These uncanny reveries assail you with such sights as you could have never imagined, images which no Ardri alive had ever seen.

From a height you can see the glowing of countless little fires burning at night from within the high walls of what must be a great city. Your eyes look out onto its sturdy structures of layered stone and cut wood, down into its streets and avenues coated with filth and litter. In the east you see several mighty boats, vessels so large and grand that you cannot fathom the methods used to fashion them, let alone move them. Loathing and awe courses through your dreaming mind, had mankind become so weak that it could no longer swim? Or had it become so clever that it no longer needed to? Without warning you find yourself standing on the muck covered cobblestones of some central avenue in what would seem to be the very city which you had been looking down upon only a moment ago. From the nocturnal gloom of the streets, a shadow emerges, its hunched and misshapen silhouette shambling forth from the darkness. A long, pale, curved, beak-like nose protrudes out from between two wide round holes through which a pair of bloodshot eyes now peer. It quickly becomes clear that most of what you see beneath the draping hood of its cloak is not an actual face, but a grotesque mask. The man props his hobbling body up with a staff of dark and gnarled wood, it appears similar to the tarwood which the forest clans use for spears and clubs. A pair of figures carrying lanterns proceed into view, following close behind the cloaked man, although these figures do not appear entirely human to you. Unlike the masked man, these light-bearers do not move with the same measure of difficulty that their leader does, although, this does not detract from the unsettling nature of their presence. A low, nearly inaudible clicking sound emanates from beneath their atramentous garb, and before long aforementioned clicking is accompanied by gentle and intermittent whirring noises which further confuse you. The gharish light of the lantern casts shifting shadows across the sackcloth raiment of the light-bearers with each stride. The figures are covered from head to foot in thick sackcloth, with not a single inch of skin visible from beneath it save for two points, the hand that holds the lantern and the eyes. Your eyes are drawn to the hand of one of the lantern holders, a metallic gleam sparkles faintly from it. At first you wonder if perhaps the light bearer is simply wearing a ring but, much to your surprise, it is not. What you see are five shining, polished, sharp, copper-colored digits wrapped around the dark metal of the lanterns ring.

The fluctuating light of the lantern momentarily illuminates this artificial hand and for a brief moment, casts a single ray of faint light upon the face of its captor. You follow that singular beam of frail light with your eyes, and find your curiosity duly punished by the sight which you now behold. In place of any visible eyes are two blue disks which sparkle like azure obsidian in the dancing flame light, while the rest of the face is completely covered with dark cloth. The space between the disks gleams with the same copper hues as the hands had, with numerous layers and overlapping plates allowing for articulation. You could not decide within yourself whether or not this being was still human, or if it ever was to begin with. Both the masked man and his two light bearers pass quickly by and a fourth, hulking follower lumbers forward into your vision. This figure stands well over seven foot tall, the massive plates and woven chains of its grey and distressed armor clanking together in a slow and steady rhythm as it paces onward. A visored helm obscures the face of this towering woman from your view, meanwhile a gigantic sword hangs across her back, swinging to and fro as her herculean frame moves along. As more of her comes into view you become quickly less concerned with her face or weapon and more concerned with what she is pulling behind her. In one of her enormous gloved hands she grips a thick chain which is attached to a metal clad cart, which she pulls apparently without complaint or consequence, as you cannot hear even the faintest breath escape her lips. The plated cart bears a number of odd sigils and symbols engraved into its surface, but one symbol inlaid with a golden metal at the center of each plate stands out. The symbol is best described as a hexagon, with a downward pointing triangle connecting three equidistant vertices of the hexagon, with a strange rune like symbol in the center of the triangle and three smaller runes in each outer partition of the hexagon. As the squeaking armored cart begins to pass you by you can hear something scuttling and scraping almost frantically within the iron confines of the cart which is accompanied by the distinct sound of atonal whistling, an otherworldly noise that is devoid of tune or meter or melody of any kind.

In a blur of motion and a deafening roar of indescribable noise your vision is hurled a vast distance into the west, across the face of the earth and beyond the continent, above the silvery surface of the midnight sea. At length the invisible **** which has propelled you thus far now plunges you down beneath the waters into the immeasurably cold and impossibly dark depths of a black ocean. For what feels like a lifetime you are suspended there, in the infinite darkness of the abyss, waiting for something, yet unaware of what that something is. From the still nothingness comes a sensation, a gentle pulse of water made by the movement of something passing beside you. Next you feel it on your opposite side, although this time the motions of the water are much more forceful betraying the assumably massive size of the invisible creature. Without warning the creature makes contact, a thousand slick scales glide across you in an instant as the current its passage has created tosses you about in its wake. A moment later and a short distance ahead, a light bursts into being, casting a pallid glow far into the ominous gloom of the sea. The source of the light wriggles back and forth in a serpentine motion through the abyss before doubling around and speeding toward you. You prepare yourself for impact, even though you are certain this is nothing more than a horrible dream. The light slows its advance briefly and stops a few feet from you, only now do you see the creature to which the haunting glow is attached. A pair of huge, round eyes glare at you, reflecting a golden light from deep within them like some horrid biological mirror. Its wide, toothy maw spans several feet across its snake-like snout, tipped with two lengthy barbels that swish about aimlessly in the waters. For a moment the creature does nothing, it seems to peer directly though you, all but able to see you here in the aphotic depths. Gradually the beast opens its jaws, rows of uneven and jagged fangs separating as its mouth stretches wider and wider. At length a nauseating screech reverberates from its gaping maw and instantly the light goes out.

You open your eyes to a breaking dawn, the morning frost having all but frozen the beads of sweat on your brow. As you search your surroundings, nothing appears to be wrong at all, everything appears to be as it should be and yet it is not. You can feel something shifting in the distance, a tangible and disconcerting fluctuation echoing through the aether from the southwest. It's almost as if you can feel the world changing.