Blade of Erogrund

Chapter 24- Demons in Dream and Darkness

He was surrounded by darkness.

No, Godric thought, that isn't right.

It was not pure darkness. A brutal charcoal grey spun around so quickly in the half-light that its swirling swath appeared like a great black curtain of shadow. Where this light came from could not be found but instead seemed to simply exist like a thousand tiny origins that all at once began and ceased amid the mass of turning curtain around him.

As he struggled to stumble back, he found himself standing on a narrow slate-like rock that projecting out from a steep cliff where the smell of fresh fog on a cloudy day engulfed his senses. Stones spun from under his feet as he turned, skipping over the edge into a looming precipice. He watched it fall for what seemed like an eternity into a murky, cloudy fog that engulfed whatever lie below, churning in sickening rolls and twists like some foul clouds destined to be harbingers of ill fate. Never did the sound of the stone hitting the land below reach his ears.

In a startling change, the curtain around him suddenly was lifted by some ethereal hand, raising him to a plain of blazing light that momentarily startled him to the point of falling from the stone outcrop he stood on.

With a rush of terror his feet struck a obsidian-black rock as slick as ice, hurtling him helplessly toward the edge of the cliff. The warmth of fear filled his hands and he felt the serpent of fear slither up his throat with his heart in its mouth but somehow his hand managed to catch on a rock, staying his fall.

The scene below blazed through his mind in such a way as only those few moments of pure horror Men are unlucky enough to experience in their lives. Those moments when the world around them burns with the uncertainty that rises like magma in their chests and falls like a searing brand upon not their minds but their hearts. The frigid air from where he hung did nothing to still the burning terror that singed his courage but instead added another layer to the pain as the frosty atmosphere froze its way into his lungs. His throat closed in combination of the burning cold and the rising horror as his eyes defied his mind and gazed upon what certainly awaited him below.

This was indeed pure darkness. Surely whatever had surrounded him formerly was merely a guise to hide the devastating sight.

Below seethed a pit of shadow in rolling waves each more accursed and fearsome than that which preceded it. With a throatless groaning it echoed out in screams like the harshest wind, propelling a nauseating scent that Godric could neither recognize nor describe. It was as though the stench of every corpse and misery experienced by Dwarf, Elf, or Man had been release from an ancient crypt and thrown with scorching vivaciousness into the nostrils of whoever was unfortunate enough to stand within its grasp, but such wording could only attempt to capture the first midday shadow of its horror. It manifested in every way and became more than an antithesis of light but an element completely unique beyond the comprehension of the mortal.

Each wave that rolled through its nightmarish expanse seemed to pull at him, defying his repulsion. The shadows that it sent from the depths of whatever was within it rose higher and higher until they engulfed his feet, letting their slithering tendrils entangle him and draw him in.

Suddenly everything from his memory disappeared. The very reason for which he hung from the cliff escaped his mind as one so engrossed in their task that they force aside all others. In one action Godric's fingers released their desperate grip and he tumble on the fingers of the shadow toward the murk below.

Then as soon as the scene had manifested itself, it disappeared.

Every element of the nightmare dissolved into a white mist as pure as the fairest cloud but refused to release him. Instead the cloudy atmosphere rearranged itself into something else. What it was his thoughts could scarcely comprehend more than the previous vision.