The Slave Knight Part 1: The Dagon

Chapter Fifteen: The Real Nightmare of New Britain

There were ten by ten of them. Ten by ten men and women, ten by ten children , ten by ten orcs and elves, dwarves, halfings, humans from all different cultures, all different languages, and all different lives. They were one and they were all, you see, as they had been subsumed by a greater being. A being not from the physical, but from the ethereal and they had gone great leagues and spent much time to get to here. Had you spoke to them, they would have never confirmed in a million years that they would be in this spot, yet the one being would have proclaimed them being here would be destiny, as this would be the end of their all gnawing hunger. However, the ten by ten had no say in what to and to not say. They had nothing they could or could not do, save for the will of the being that possessed them. The ten by ten were nothing apart from their own meister. The Night Mare.

There was no choice when it concerned the Night Mare. The Night Mare created choice, and free will, and purpose, and all things for those he possessed, and would create it for more had it had the desire. For now, it had no desire, but to feed. Unlike most beasts of this new world, the Night Mare did not feed on the flesh of men and women, or suckling babes, or new born dwarves, or elder elves, or the hardened pureblood orcs. There were things that were more delectable to its sensitive tastes.

Fear.

Anger.

Oppression.

Hate.

Rage.

Obsession.

Repression.

Digression.

So many things that were sweeter than pie to itself, and it would gorge itself on as much as it could get, for however long it could get it, and in this world there was a lot of that. By that, we mean emotions. Emotions to feed off of and do more with, to satiate it's ever increasing hunger. Emotions to bask and experience. Emotions ripe for manipulating, and taking. And that is what it would do. But therein within this world lied a problem. There were not a lot of people. There were not a lot of things that it could manipulate and make into what it wanted. It had to suffer with the leavings of animals that could not derive true conception of true emotions. The complexities were just not there. The rabbit, the deer, the fox, the wolf, had fears of hunger, of lack of a mating partner, of predators. But those feelings were simple and uncomplicated. They left much to be desired by the Night Mare, and it learned that in its early years.

True fear was derived from those who had more developed and evolved minds. More concerns and worry and complications that compounded upon one another that they could not bear to live with. Such things were so filling to the Night Mare. It sustained the Night Mare and it is what brought the Night Mare out into the open cities of the world. Away from the desolate wasteland of the forests and deserts, and into the populations of the Kingdoms United.

It had first existed in the time before time, which was a time of great decadance for the Night Mare, yet then it was not known as anything. It was a passing fancy for many, and the Night Mare had left many horrors of humans and death in its wake. Slinking about in the darkness of the world. In the cracks and crevices of the forgotten world. In the alleyways. In the sewers. In the twilights and midnights it found its home, and it was more than able to thrive. For one reason or another, the Night Mare could not subsist on its own. It would exist in the ephemeral as an ethereal being, sliding in and out of the ethereal and physical realms, not truly knowing its place and whisking itself back and forth trying to find all that it craved. It knew it craved something more than the spiritual as it felt that the ethereal realm was...

Unfulfilling.

It lacked the excitement of the physical. It lacked the presence and dynamic that living and breathing beings possessed. It lacked the complexities of human thought and emotion and instead contained beings and things with only one singular drive. Light or dark. The Night Mare was more concerned about shades. It was more concerned about depth. It was more concerned about experiencing those shades and those depths, yet it could find no such things in the ethereal. So it searched for pathways to other realms, and upon the wings of an angelic or demonic being (it knew not which as all seemed the same to itself) it found itself cascaded into the physical realm where it found the dynamism that it sought for over a millennia.