The party, tired from the journey through the caverns, sets off for their beds, glad to have a chance to rest.
Despite the...unusual materials of the bed (Are those lichen fiber sheets?), it's surprisingly comfortable. That night, however, you're plagued by various nightmares.
You find yourself fleeing down the streets of Aretrian, vacant of everyone and everything, save a massive, nameless beast of roiling chaos, thundering down the roads and alleys behind you, charging through buildings as easily as the emptied streets. You get only a handful of glimpses of it; the body is a roiling mass, with no defined form, propelled at great speeds by pseudopods slamming against the ground. And-- on top of it. Do you see a black-and-red mask?
You have little time to ponder the question, as a second of the beasts crashes through the tower in front of you. The alleys all seem to knit together, trapping you between them, but in the rubble you spot a gleaming bit of metal. The ancient, jeweled long sword lies there. You rush for it, and grab it just as one of beasts bears down upon you. You swing it just before you're crushed, and from the place where the blade meets tumorous flesh, a point of light appears, expanding until it consumes your vision. You're utterly blinded by the once-minuscule spark, and wracked with incredible pain for a few agonizing seconds before you wake. You feel strangely out of breath.
You find yourself lost, in a desert without name nor border. Your vision wavers, and you feel as though you'll die of thirst any moment. Far in the distance, brilliantly lit by the bright desert sun, you see a river. Charging ahead, you try to reach it, but as your foot meets the bank a vast sandstorm begins without warning. You're forced back by the wind, and the sand begins to strip away your skin. No, not sand, you realize; the sheer heat of the sun has turned it to glass. Somewhere in the distance, you see a red-robed figure. As the sand storm of glass painfully tears at your flesh, exposing bones and organs to the vicious onslaught, you mercifully wake. You feel mildly sunburnt in various patches, and your mouth is like cotton.
You find yourself treading water to keep afloat in a vast arctic sea. You're freezing cold, and exhausted. It won't be long before your limbs give out and you drown. At the very edge of perception, a large chunk of ice bobs. You swim towards it, your numb arms proving ineffective at propelling yourself through the water. But, with sustained effort of your protesting body, you manage to make it. Achingly forcing yourself up, the wind begins to howl. You knew that you've saved yourself from a death by water, but as the gale steals more and more heat from your sodden form, you know that you won't even survive to the night. The pain from the cold becomes unbearable, and you find yourself giving in unconsciousness. As your vision becomes tinged with black, you think you see a blue-on-cyan mask, somewhere beneath the icy blue water. As your consciousness fades in the dream, it returns in reality. As you wake, you feel yourself shiver despite the warmth of the blankets.
You find yourself in a sparring hall, lined with weapons and armor. The sidelines are filled with training dummies, who seem to be watching as intently as any rookie warriors would. Across the room stands your opponent; a larger dummy, wielding a large axe, with a strangely familiar gray mask with an etching of a sword. You reach for a weapon, and grab a flail; your own, you think. How did that get here? You don't have long to wonder, as in a mere second the dummy detaches from its pole, running on legs of hay towards you, axe raised over head. You dodge by just an inch, and slam your flail into it, but it doesn't even seem to notice. You call upon Hextor for assistance, but nothing happens. The dummy turns. With a sickening whistle, it sends the axe into you.
But it doesn't simply kill you; the axe thuds painfully into your arm. With impossible dexterity, it kicks you squarely in the groin before following up with another hack at your now-prone body. Every nerve fires with pain, as flesh is torn, bones are broken, and limbs are hacked off, but no matter how much blood you lose you never die or pass out. Finally, mercifully, when you're reduced to little more than a torso filled with shattered ribs digging at your flesh even as the dummy rears back to swing and a skull that's almost entirely crumpled, your eyes, now useless for the blood covering them, roll back in your head. You awake, with a terrible pain along your arm from some unseen wound. It passes quickly.
Your dreams, actually, are relatively untroubled. But you catch snatches of something white throughout your normal dreams, never anything more than a quick glimpse. You're plagued by the sense you're being watched, which persists until you wake.
Despite your troubled dreams, you feel infinitely more experienced upon waking. [3000 EXPERIENCED GAINED!]
Should any ask Arias about this, he would say it's an effect of the spores the mushroom men emit. They use it as a sort of hive mind, but others who breathe it in can sometimes glean useful knowledge. This isn't nearly as effective after the first exposure to it, though.
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Topic: City of Aretrian - IC Thread (Read 59409 times)