Light Eternal

Chapter 28

"Where am I?" Dronark wondered aloud as he wandered through an unfamiliar landscape.

The only thing he could recall was passing out before waking up in this surreal world.  The skies above were a swirling deep misty reddish orange, the earth beneath him was stony, craggy, and cracked, and the towering, twisted trees surrounding him were dead and stripped of all bark.  There was not a soul to be seen in this strangely twisted world.

After wandering the dry nightmareish forests for what seemed like hours, he happened upon a clearing.   Within the clearing was a woman of dark elf ethnicity.  Her formerly colorful and elaborately decorated gown was faded, tattered, and torn.  Her silvery white hair flowed down her back like water.  She sat in the middle of the clearing, hands covering her face, sobbing audibly.  He carefully approached, the dry grass crunching beneath his feet.  As he got closer, he recognized the pattern on the fabric.

"Mother?" He cautiously whispered, "Is, is that you?"

This couldn't be real... it had to be a hallucination, a nightmare.  He pinched himself, hoping the pain would wake him up, but to no avail.

"Oh my baby boy..." She sobbed, "Why did you leave me?"

"I-I didn't want to leave, but you told me to go..." Dronark stammered, "He would have killed me if I didn't..."

"You left me all alone with that... monster...," she hissed, "Without you, he... he..."

His mother sobbed even harder, tears running down her arms, soaking the thirsty earth below.  He looked closer, noticing cuts, welts, and bruises all over her dark bluish grey skin.  His stomach lurched, how was that even possible?  Even if his step father had been cruel to him, he was not THAT kind of monster.

"Mother, I... I'm sorry," he said, kneeling down in front of her, reaching out to comfort the crying woman.

She peeked through her fingers, one red and black eye surrounded by heavy bruising peered out at him.

"Oh my darling son," She whispered as she removed her hands from her face, "I loved you so much..."

That face... it wasn't the face of his beloved mother... The mouth was impossibly large, the bottom jaw stretching down past her collarbone.  The inside of her gigantic maw was lined with rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.  A large tentacle like tongue lashed back and forth, reaching for Dronark as he backed away

"WHY DID YOU LEAVE US?!" the creature that had once taken the form of Dronark's mother screeched, "HOW COULD YOU ABANDON YOUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD?!"

She reached toward him, her fingers lengthening into sharp claws.  She barely resembled an elf anymore, as her body twisted and morphed into something that could only be described as an abomination.  Her skin withered till it was wrinkled and torn, her limbs turning to long, skinny, branch like protrusions, and her stomach becoming bloated, wrinkled, and saggy.  He turned around, running back into the dead, dry forest as fast as his legs could carry him, the beastly monstrosity hot on his heels.

He ran and ran, deeper and deeper into the dead forest as the beast screeched and screamed behind him.  All around him, the terrain morphed and twisted from a dry, desiccated forest to a malodorous, fleshy marshland.   The dry trees changed to fleshy growths of bone and sinew, each branch ending in a wriggling, grasping hand that tried to grab him as he passed by.  The ground became squishy flesh, squelching with each step.  To his horror, he tripped over a fallen log of bone and sinew, falling down into a pit filled with foul smelling water.  He splashed and flailed, trying to grab onto something, anything, even one of those horrific hand-branches from the living flesh trees.