You stand upon the surface of the ocean. The water at your feet is perfectly flat, calm, like the perfect surface of a mirror save for the minute ripples that spread out from where your feet touch it. You look up, and a storm rages, silent fury tearing the sky and seeming for all the world like it would tear the world asunder, given the chance.
Around you, the waters rise up to meet it, surging in great waves the size of mountains, clawing at the sky with unspeakable force.
The world revolves, the sky and sea become one all around you, and when you look down at your feet again, whatever mysterious force that had held you on the surface all this time seems to give out, and you fall into the darkness beneath.
You stand in a crimson void.
Before you is a gate, a disc of stone, pitted and carved with a thousand intricate designs that interconnect, join, and branch out over its surface, its design changing wherever you do not focus upon it. You know its essence, however. You have seen it before. Fluid the color of rubies wells up from its center, spreading through permutations and the eternal churn of symbols and patterns until it fills every one of the thousands of channels that mark the surface of the Gate.
You find yourself reaching out to it, just as you know it reaches out to you. You touch the warm surface of the stone, and your vision fades, overwhelmed by a great red light.
Nothing is true. Nothing is solid.
The world around you changes, flashes of places you’ve seen, people you’ve known, half-formed in an impenetrable mist, mixed together at random, connections made seemingly without rhyme or reason.
You feel them, the beasts of your mind. They are around you, above you, within the very earth you stand upon. Reality is a maelstrom of images, sounds, concepts. You are no exception. You look at yourself, and see yourself as if viewed through a kaleidoscope, shattered into a thousand tiny fragments.
A great eye opens before you, and the uncountable selves pour into it, the world blazing white before fading away.
Before you is a door.
Wide and tall, forged of gold and embedded with gems and complex and beautiful designs. You stand transfixed for a moment, and then approach, seeking a better view.
As you reach the base of the great Gate, you see the gold tarnish and turn to brass, the gems lose their luster, the symbols swim and distort, until you stand before it, and all you see is a simple door of brass, rhinestones dotting it seemingly at random, marked with symbols that bear no meaning, no deeper symbolism, mere scratches and marks without purpose or value.
You open the door and pass on.
You stand, just barely, on a road. Or at least you think it's a road. Might just s well be a root. Or a rope. Or just a loose cluster of stars barely knitted together into a linear shape.
All around you is the night sky. Though not one you know. An endless stretch of kaleidoscopic bursts of lights shifting into patterns and alignments indescribable. You see planets and moons shifting in solar systems you never knew existed. Before you, a great pool fills with the starlight from above, a great disk of rainbow light, a whirlpool that reflects the countless worlds above you.
Then what appears to be a squirrel somehow pushes itself out of your wood-riddled leg, dashing toward the pool before straightening up, running backward as he shouts belligerently back at you.
"Come on, three-legs! We ain't got all day! There's no extension on the doomsday timer just for your crippled ass! HAUL!"
And with that, Ratatoskr leaps into the air, his body twisting in a circle several times before he plunges down into the pool.
You follow, and as the waters close around you, you feel as if your body was being… stretched, as if the whole of yourself existed across an unimaginable distance of space simultaneously, for but the briefest instant.
You stand in the endless void. All around you, the world revolves.
Birth. Growth. Decay. Death. Endless cycles, repeating into infinity.
You pay them no mind. Not because they aren’t important, but because they’re simply an effect, like light shining from a star, or water flowing down from the mountains. You gaze at the image before you, at once an egg, a shining star, and a point of infinite darkness. You see yourself within it, reflected perfectly, and you step forward, stepping into the infinite.
The place you stand is familiar, to a point.
This particular corner of the bayou isn’t one you’ve seen before, but the life, the feeling, the idea of it is the same. Before you, a depression in the ground filled with crystal-clear water, and above it, a waterfall that falls seemingly from nowhere, simply cascading down from the sky above. You look into it, and you are reflected back. A thousand different ‘you’s, a thousand different possibilities. Some broken, some strong, some who simply fade away. You step into the waters, and all fade, leaving behind a single, indistinct silhouette.
You pass through the water, and a sense of determination fills you.
You feel a screaming in your mind.
Wake up
Sprays of blood, ribbons of gore, great beasts torn asunder.
Wake up
Malformed, thin-limbed creatures, screaming incoherently as they hunt their prey. Rage, hatred, without mercy, seeking to slaughter and devour all that they behold.
You must wake up
Something worse, something elemental, a storm of violence and horror that drove the monsters into panicked frenzy.
The Unchained Predator
The Hellwalker
Without pity
Unbreakable
Incorruptible
Unyielding.
The figure stands, and you see it is you, but not you, other faces within your own. As you look at them, a pain blooms behind your eyes, and you can bear to look no more.
Your mind passes into oblivion.
An amount of time somewhere between an instant and a thousand years passes.
you awaken upon a stone floor, the sound of a fire crackling nearby, issuing from a fireplace that is the only feature within this room, other than the plain wooden door that sits against the far wall.
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Topic: Eventide University IC: The Fourth Awakening (Read 32303 times)