Blancslieth: Prologue to The Demise of Mourndream

A Hostage

(You may have to adjust your volume for this one. Also, I tried finding a video with only the music, but I couldn't find one for this song. Don't worry about the creepy man in the video.)

Settling into a dazed stupor to counteract the pressing apprehension and queasiness, Durven continued onward on numb feet. It was one thing to be dispatched to this land of darkness with a squadron; but a squadron was too large to go unnoticed by the inhabitants of said land. It was another to be sent with a friend which one would depend upon for physical as well as moral comfort. It was another thing entirely to be utterly alone in the Ebony Sea, bordering on the northern arm of the Mountains of Dusk and the crushing weight of Jovandur. Durven could see the terrain around him, bleak and lifeless though it was, but it seemed vague and unimportant; now, there was nothing but the droning wind and the shuddering thunder's unearthly groans. The hill steepened; the wind shrieked. He grasped a splintery bush to haul himself upwards; the thunder growled menacingly in the base of his skull. Durven felt a shudder run the length of his spine, but his eyes never stopped scanning the mountainside ahead.

There was a ledge ahead, a small outcropping of flattened land that was surrounded by a thick wall of brush. Perhaps that was where Maffe had gone, and Durven darted upwards in futile hope. "Presence" indeed, he thought bitterly, reflecting on the dwarf's words the previous night. There is nothing so massive in these mountains that it designates a ceremony. Oh blast you, Maffe, for dragging me all the way... His train of thought failed him as his gait slowed. The wind jostled him onward a step, and he glared behind him at what he could not see.

Suppose Maffe had not been mistaken? Suppose he had been accurate, and now the dwarf was struggling towards catching sight of whatever new evil had emerged from Jovandur's womb? Durven shook his head, dispelling whatever hindrance had encompassed his rational thought. Of course Maffe had been correct; the abilities of the Dwarves were nothing to scoff at. But if that was the case, why had he started on this wild journey through the wilderness? Did he not know sense enough to retain from frolicking after a giant "presence" of ancient times? Overhead, thunder roared, and Durven's heart raced as he dropped instinctively into a crouch. And that is to say nothing of the weather, he reminded himself, standing perplexedly. I have seen strange patterns in the clouds and heard the most unnerving of winds, but never have I experienced such here, at least not in the daytime.

Durven's earlier sense that something was terribly wrong was surfacing once more.

In the end, he resigned himself to trailing after Maffe still. His reasoning was that if some unnatural phenomenon was occurring, perhaps it was affecting the dwarf in a way that he could not prevent himself from succumbing to its will, and thus was in need of being rescued. With this revelation, he continued onward, at less of a terrified pace than a hurried one. My terror will be needed later, I reckon, he thought. When I end up needing rescued right along with Maffe. I had better save it up. Switching to verbal expression as the wind beat at his back, he added, "And not allow that blasted breeze to scare me into submission."

The soft crunch of his boots in the dirt and the quiet crackle of the dry bushes as they were flogged by the wind were both lost in the imposing heaves of thunder. The icy fingers of the breeze crawled down Durven's back and latched onto his ears and nose, flinging his sandy hair about his eyes, but he determinedly ignored it. It was only the rise and fall of air currents. The thunder was only the lightning's successor. All of these things have natural explanations, he thought, trying to keep his mind busy with a monologue, however twisted and... The whispers suddenly swished into existence once more, transferred by the breeze. Durven's elected to dispose of his current line of thought.

Durven quieted his footfalls as he neared his destination, precautions taken despite the bitter wind and thunder. The mysterious, unnerving whispers seemed to be becoming more and more audible the closer he got to the ledge, and Durven knew now without a doubt that it was there that had been Maffe's destination. He could feel someone--something--else in the presence of his friend just beyond the rise, but he cowered below it. There was a darkness creeping over his heart, a darkness that had drawn his attention from the reality around him and nailed it inwards, toward his own soul and spiritual well-being. The something that was not right, the something that he had been conscious of, in retrospect, ever since he had listened to Maffe's dissipating footfalls that morning. It was just beyond the rise, beyond the brush that lined its lip, and Durven was determined to see what it was.

He had to steel his resolve first. But then he pushed himself over the rim and gazed upon Maffe.

The dwarf stood in the center of the ledge, which Durven now realized was larger than he had first speculated. In fact, it was spacious indeed, and its cobbled ground loaned it the appearance of a particularly large city square. However, that was where the likeness ended. On the northern, eastern, and western sides, sheer cliffs arose to bar the way for any unauthorized ascension, curving slightly to create the shape of a vague dome. The wind screeched as it flowed through, over, and around the jagged rocks that poked from the cliff's face, cackling at its futile but valiant attempts at counterattack. Durven's eyes rose to the top of the cliff, where the black, swirling mass of cloud loomed. The thunder that emanated from its core resounded resolutely around the ledge.

All of this Durven took in within the span of a few seconds, feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise. However, it was neither the unearthly howls of the wind nor the magnificent roars of thunder that caused it. He had gradually become aware of the ghastly, ghoulish whispering's source: the faint black figures that surrounded the cobbled area, facing Maffe. They were of differing size, from the stooped, gaunt figures of what would have otherwise been gnomes to the tall, impressive forms of what elves had succumbed to Jovandur's vice. They were hunched and had gnarled hands glimmering in the shadows of their lightless cloaks, and their faces were obscured from sight by the shadows cast by the hoods that had been drawn. The hems of their cloaks seemed to flicker, smokelike, in and out of view, and where the beings' feet should have touched down beneath the fabric was dissipated, tendrils of mist replacing what should have been solid. Durven thought he caught a whiff of what would have passed as heat had it not been so bitterly cold. The figures of the Witch-folk, for of their origin Durven had no doubt, were black and gaunt and terrifying, and their incessant whispering of familiar-sounding words cast a shadow upon his own heart. It was racing, and his breaths came in transitory gasps that tore from his mouth only by necessity. His bones seemed frozen in place, his throat tightened out of horror, and he would look back at this moment and realize that this fact was likely for the best, as he would otherwise have screamed. This was the first time that he had ever glimpsed any of these mythical, nightmarish beings born from the heart of Jovandur.

And now Durven's attention turned back to Maffe, his friend, who stood stonelike in the center of the semi-ring. The ground beneath his outstretched stomach trembled as the storm overhead bellowed its challenge. There was no shadow of incredulity in Durven's mind now; his friend had been compromised and brought here to this place of evil by some unseen and unknowable spirit that possessed him. He had heard tell of... things, allegedly the souls of the deceased Witch-folk that had taken abode in the fallen Shnak structures: Shnak-Xon, Shnak-Korrg, Shnak-Rae, and Shnak-Dornn. The folk who had claimed to have witnessed these spectral beings called them by many names: Wraiths, Specters, Phantoms, and the details regarding their encounters varied. However, the basic facts remained unchanged: they were invisible, they could possess a person, and they then could control that person's actions.

Through the haze of fear, Durven's mind could just form a coherent thought: Maffe,old friend, could it be possible that a Wraith has you under its control?

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