[Mkguild] MK: Nightmares (2/2)

[Hallan Mirayas]

    Drift paced in his cell.  Three steps across, ignore the squeeze of aedra ground at the edge, three steps back.  Ignore the pain.  Three steps across.  Endure.  Three steps back.  Repeat.  He had long ago lost count of the passes.  Three steps.  Turn.  Three steps.  Anything to keep his mind running, to keep himself awake.  Anything to avoid the memories that lurked in ambush in his nightmares.  Three steps.  Turn.   Three steps-

    Wait.  Where was the pressure, the threatened vice closing on his toes?  Where-

    A key rattled in the lock of his cell.  At the same moment, a scent hit his nose… and he was suddenly back in the Halls of Revonos.  They had taunted him with that scent again and again, jeered and laughed as ice stabbed his heart, buried memories and slaughtered hopes hacked at with a shovel and dragged bleeding back to the surface.  Pain always followed, a living avalanche of claws and teeth, fists and daggers, torment unending… until the day the denizens of the Sixth Hell reaped the whirlwind of his wrath.  Until the stones drank deep of their blood and the Beast of Revonos feasted on their entrails to the sound of his master's roaring laughter.  Then he did it again, and again, until his former tormentors learned that to taunt the Blood Wolf was to court annihilation.  Until they learned to fear the golden-eyed glare of the Frozen Flame.

    Drift was already in motion as the door swung, teeth bared in fury that any would dare to try that old trick again, and his claws speared through the intruder's chest like-

    Wait.  The stones were gray.  Not red.  The blood that splashed across them ran down in rivulets, instead of vanishing into the thirsty dust.  The weight slumping onto his arm reminded him that he had arms instead of-

    That shape.  That shape!  He knew that shape!  He knew those wings!  Even as it slumped lifeless, blood frothing in pink bubbles at the corners of its mouth, he knew that face.  He knew-

    That ring.

    No.

    Nono.

   Impossible.

    No!

    It was impossible!

    Nononononono-

    Thunder roared -nonono- as the ground split open -nonono- under his feet, and as the void -nonono- took him, he glimpsed his own body -NONONO!- tearing apart a prison guard, smashing -NONONO!!- the gates off their hinges, and -NONONO!!!- starting a rampage through the town below -NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

    He woke up screaming.

----

    Carcarak stirred.  A waft of air brought a new scent to him, one that he recognized… and at the same time did not.  The dissonance frustrated  him; a mental state that, within the most avid disciple Lord Revonos had ever known, flashed over instantly into a paranoid, smouldering rage.  He paced in anticipation.  Eyes widened and jaws slavered when the ordered crush of aedra ground faded, and when the key turned in the lock, his tail wagged.  Once.  Then he lunged.

    Blood fountained.  It would not be the last to do so this night!  The Beast of Revonos was loosed!  Let the world tremble!  Combat in this new arena was ridiculously easy, and he reveled in it as he heaped the corpses high!  Screams of terror poured into his ears and he savored them; the very best kind of applause.  Joy and bliss and feral satisfaction-

    Carcarak snapped awake in the middle of breaking a dark horse-man's back, and the scream in his mouth morphed into an indignant roar as he saw the cell around him, the door shut, the aedra crush intact.  No dead bodies.  None.  His fury detonated.  Adamantine claws ripped and raked at everything around him.  The straw pallet flew into tatters like dust in a whirlwind.  Shards sprayed from the gray stone of his cage, deep gouges slashed wherever he could reach.  The door ward flared over and over to keep him away as he exploded, apoplectic with rage.  How had he been brought back here?!?

    And more importantly…

   "WHO STOLE MY KILLS!?!"

----

May 26, 708 CR

    "Malger, the next time you pray to your goddess, would you mind telling her that she didn't need to shout?" Misha grumbled.  A sleepless night hung like lead weights on the fox's ears and body.  He was not the only one to look so burdened.

    The council had reconvened.  Of all of them, only Rickkter and Malger looked like they'd had any rest, and even the raccoon looked rumpled.  "I'll second that," Ricckter groused.

    Misha tilted his head, faintly puzzled.  "I thought you had wards-"

    "I do," the raccoon mage interrupted, his ears flattening.  "Kayla didn't."  He shot Malger a glare.

    Malger smiled warmly, with a soft, rueful chuckle and a slight bow of his head.  Then his entire expression hardened in an instant, whiskers set in frozen tension.  All the whimsical jocularity, all the hints of music in his voice, vanished like a door closing on a lightless room.  "Then you're not likely to forget it now, are you?" he replied in a soft growl.  "And in this case, it's one of the most direct indications I've ever heard of from her.  Edward Snow's sanity hangs by a fraying thread, and if he is not handled precisely correctly, his fall to madness will bring catastrophe.  Here, now, in Metamor, is the only chance he has to avoid that fate, and only if Alexastra is involved in precisely the right manner."

    "Lord Sammekh concurs," Lothanasa hin'Elric growled.  Narrowed eyes and a reluctant frown suggested her dislike for having to say it, but a deep breath smoothed her features and restored her equilibrium.  "The creature Snow has become is... vexatious to his sight, but catastrophe can be avoided. The Ladies Akkala and Velena have already offered their support and aid in his care, on the condition that he remain here in Metamor.  Do not send him away.  He would return as surely as metal to a lodestone, and he would bring devastation in his wake."

    "Vexatious?" Misha asked with a frown, leaning across the table at which they sat.  "What do you mean, 'vexatious'?"

    "When Lord Sammekh examines the future," Raven explained, splaying out her fingers on the table in illustration, "he looks through the possibilities in search of the one that best serves all parties involved."  She folded in her fingers as she spoke until only the index finger of her right hand remained, which she brought up vertically between them.  "But for some reason," she continued, "your friend's future refuses to resolve to just one path."  Raven lifted her left hand and hooked both index fingers around each other in a double helix so tight the tendons stood out under her fur.  "For some reason not yet understood, your friend always has two: overlapping, almost superimposed.  Each fighting to overshadow and repress the other, neither succeeding, all the way up to the end…"  Raven folded her hands together and gazed at Misha across her knuckles, her voice soft with sorrow.  "When they tear each other apart."

    "When they what??"  Misha's chair scraped across the stone, nearly toppling as he jolted to his feet.

    "I'm sorry, Misha.  A year.  Maybe two.  That's as far as Lord Sammekh can see of his fate before it passes from his sight.  As far as can be foreseen, the best you can do is make him comfortable in the time he has.  All the other options lead to war, across the world and across the heavens.  He would not say more."  She sighed and laid her hands back down on the table.  "I'm sorry, Misha.  I know he was important to you."

    Misha sat back down with a thump, completely poleaxed.  Rickkter picked up the questioning in his stead.  "Sutt, you said that Misha 'getting there in time' would prevent disaster."

    The archduke, still devoid of his usual flippancy, retorted, "No, I said doom, and that has been averted."  He gestured toward the fox.  "Misha and his compatriots arrived at precisely the right time, as they were forewarned to do.  If the Beast had made it to the Valley with the strength he showed in the shadow of the Murk, there would have been too many distractions and threats for words to reach him, and he would have laid waste to the entire region before being brought to bay and slain, at ruinous cost.  That's supposing some power-hungry fool like Nasoj didn't try to capture him for their own ends first."  Finally, a flicker of his humor twitched his whiskers before they dipped into a frown.  "While that may have nicely removed that remaining threat to the north, the results of that overthrow would have been worse still."

    "How?" Rickkter snapped back.

    "It matters not," the Duke interjected, cutting the argument short with a rap of his hooflet-tipped fingers on the table.  "That hurdle is past, and it was never implied to be the only one.  So…"  The Lord of Metamor turned his attention to both the Archduke and the Lothanasa.  "Do either of you have an indication of what our next steps should be?"

    "There is much that is still in flux, much that is still uncertain.  But this much is certain, insofar as my Lady in her wisdom felt necessary to inform me: Alexastra is the key piece to the poisoned puzzle of Edward Snow and the Beast of Revonos.  It is ultimately your decision to allow her safe harbor here, but I would strongly advise it."

    "'Felt necessary'?"  Misha roused himself from his stunned state, and his good ear flattened as he quoted the marten's words back to him.  "Do you think she's holding something back?"  His gaze flicked over to Raven next.  "What about you?  Would your Lord Sammekh keep something from you?"

    Raven frowned, disliking being conjoined with the daedra worshiper in the fox-man's questioning, but recognizing the reasoning.  "Would he?  Absolutely.  But not for the reasons you're thinking, Misha Brightleaf."  Her eyes bored into Misha's, gold to his gray.  "Even if you could speak in a language they would understand, do you think you would be able to give an ant directions from here to the Mule?"

    "An ant?"

    "It's a matter of scale, Misha," Malger continued, sliding into the conversational gap with practiced skill.  "Field of view.  Vocabulary and concepts.  No offense is intended.  There are things we cannot currently understand- words we haven't even invented yet.  Ripples of effect spreading far beyond what we'd consider, but that Sammekh, Nocturna, and even Klepnos do, each in their own way.  When the Lothanasa said earlier that Lord Sammekh searches for the best result possible for all involved, it is no small matter, no simple consideration."

    "They view the entire world, Misha." Raven picked up where Malger left off.  "Not just the world as it exists now, but all the could-be's and might-become's, intertwined and entangled like a nest made of spiders' webs.  Pull one strand, and the whole thing changes in a million, million different ways.  That's what Lord Sammekh sifts through, and then winnows down to a level we can understand."

    Misha sat back in his chair again, uncertain what he could possibly reply to such a statement.  At that moment, Madog nuzzled his head under Misha's fallen hand, and Misha stroked the metal fox's neck and back in turn, allowing himself to be distracted and take time for things to settle in his mind.  Once again, Madog had appeared in a room he hadn't been in a moment before, and for that the fox was grateful.  A year?  Two at most?  The other revelation, that the aedra and daedra could…  It was too big for him to grasp right now, so he set it aside.  Still petting Madog's head, Misha blew out a long sigh.  "So… what do we do?"  After a moment, he turned his eyes to Duke Thomas.  "Or perhaps I should say what do you plan to do, my lord?"

-----

    White-furred ears twitched, then pricked up and swiveled.  That had been a knock on something wooden.  Most likely a door, somewhere far away.  Then the footsteps of the dungeon keeper.  Then the rattle of keys, a tinkle of metal on metal that led to the clunk of a lock and the swinging of hinges.  The air faintly stirred, the breeze not strong enough to reach to him, but enough to displace the scents of his cage somewhat.  The hinges again, the click of a latch, then the lock again.  Footsteps.  New ones.  Coming closer.  The clicks of claws instead of the tread of boots told him a great deal.  Two embers of voices in conversation danced across his senses, not quite loud enough to distinguish anything beyond a male and a female.  Two voices.  Three sets of feet.  Interesting.

    A waft of air finally brought him something.  A scent.  A painful scent.  A forbidden scent.  But he remembered the nightmare, and so he waited, ears down and eyes narrowed as a growl built deep in his chest.  The wrath of the Blood Drinker, the Heart Eater rumbled outward through the stony corridors, a deadly warning and a lethal promise.  For daring to stir that memory, for daring to taunt the Beast of Revonos, he would make them suffer.  And yet, deep in his heart, a flicker dared to stir.  A tiny gap opened in the stormclouds, and a timid ray of light peeked through.  Every muscle tensed, taut as a drawn bowstring.

    Do not trust to hope.  A sliver of hope in a sea of despair will draw Revonos like iron to a lodestone.

    Then they came into view.  The first face, he did not recognize.  Gray fur, a black mask, leather armor of some kind.  Negligible threat.  The third face he saw only dimly, recognizing it as Misha's, but the second eclipsed it in his attention.  He knew that face.  He knew those eyes.

    He wanted to believe.  How he wanted to believe!  For a moment, his ears rose, his eyes widened, his nose quested for more.  He took one step forward, then another, stopping just short of the door to his cell, laying a hand against the doorjamb to steady himself.  The wards flared in warning, so close that energy sparked off of quivering, forward-swept whiskers.  Wisps of smoke curled upward unnoticed as chaotic daedric essence warred with orderly aedra energy.  His jaw spasmed, lips and tongue struggling to form a word he'd not even dared to think for… he knew not how long.  His voice trembled, dusty and cracking with strain.

    "Alexis?"

    Their eyes met, and chocolate eyes widened as golden eyes flared.   The sun went out, snuffed as effortlessly as a flickering candle.  Designed by the Lord of the Sundered Shield to see through illusions and camouflage, the golden gaze of the Beast of Revonos always saw the fastest way to destroy anything he perceived… and what he saw was not the way to kill a mortal woman.   Not even a mortal bat-woman.   But it was not a path unrecognized.  Drift hurled himself in an instant against the door, and its flaring wards hurled him all the way across the cell into the far wall with a peal like thunder.   He was back again a moment later, teeth bared in a rictus of pure, volcanic fury.   The adamantine claws of his left hand dug deep into the stone doorway, and his right drew back in a fist.  "You!  Are! Not! Alexis!!" he screamed, slamming that fist into the wards with each word, and the collision of forces shook mortar from the stones throughout the dungeon.  In the next instant, he let go his hold of the doorway and allowed the ward to push him back a stride, foot claws dragging furrows through the stone as he inhaled deep.

    Misha recognized that motion with a curse.  "Move!" he yelled, reaching out to shove Alexastra aside while he dove for cover.  The triple bang of all three layers of wards firing in quick succession almost drowned out the crystalline crack of shattering ice and a gasp from Alexastra.  Looking up from where he'd landed, Misha's jaw dropped as ice flecks drifted down like stinging confetti.  The longer of Rickkter's dragon swords hummed slightly, still held in a parrying position in front of Alexastra's face, while the raccoon himself swiped at a dusting of pulverized ice on his face and chest.  Alexastra picked herself up off the floor, her expression a picture of shock as a hand touched the thin slice across her cheek and came away bloody.  A chunk of ice detonating off the door and snatched from midair had made it through all three wards, fragmenting and compressing with each one until a diamond-hard spindle the width of a knitting needle ricocheted off of Rickkter's blade just short of spearing Alexastra through her left eye straight into her brain.

    And the Beast roared.  "I am Carcarak!  The Red Jaws!  The Beast of Revonos!  I am the Blood Wolf and the Frozen Flame, famed and FEARED throughout all the arenas of the Nine Hells!!  I am Wrath and War and Pain Unending, and when your screams no longer amuse me, I am Death!  On your knees, little morsel, or I'll rip your beating heart from your chest and EAT IT WHILE YOU WATCH!!"

    Alexastra reeled back in instinctive fear, eyes fixed on the creature in the cell.  The disaster.  The abomination.  Silence fell, broken only by continued invective from the prison cell that, in her shock, Alexastra let flow past her unheeded.   Explanations for the catastrophe before her were examined, re-examined, and discarded in quick succession, and her gut twisted as each grew crazier than the one before.   What finally settled out boded ill indeed… for someone other than her.   The room grew chill, the torches guttering.   Alexastra rounded on the fox, her eyes narrowed to stilettos of pure outrage, stayed from striking him only by the threat of Rickkter behind her.  If it really was Rickkter.   "You lied to me," she accused.  "Who are you?  How long have we really been gone?  I want the truth this time!  How dare you mock me with this… this… simulation!?"

    "What are you talking about, you crazy woman?" Misha objected, startled by the unexpected accusation, but he got no further.

    "Impossible!"  Alexastra snapped.   "Absolutely impossible!  How many years, to cause that kind of damage?  Decades?  Centuries?  Who are you, and what is the meaning of this deception?"  Her voice, frozen though it was, equaled the Beast's in fury, and her eyes promised retribution on a generational scale.   You, your parents, your siblings, your lover, your children, your children's children…

    Misha stepped back a few paces, out of reach, and Whisper materialized in his hand.  "Three months and only three months," he repeated calmly, refusing to be provoked or intimidated.   He deliberately steered his voice into calm flatness, to counterbalance the extremes around him.

    "Impossible!" the daedress repeated.   "Are you blind?"  She stabbed a finger toward the window in the outer door.   "Use your magesight!  Can you not see the aura around him?  The energy?"  The Beast in his cell shifted his stance to snarl anew.   For an instant, something flickered across his face, like a mask whose wearer had moved just a fraction too quickly, lagging just a hair's breadth behind, and the strangeness of it drew her attention even as it faded.   Alexastra's flattened ears rose slowly to half.   Her narrowed eyes widened as an ancient memory stirred, ancient even for her.   A memory with terrible implications.   She'd heard stories, legends even, but…  Cold fear dropped into her belly as all of the pieces suddenly clicked into place.   It was the only explanation that fit all the data, the only thing that could explain the power of the aura she saw, the short span of time, and that strange, lagging flicker.   As she regarded the Beast anew, her voice dropped to a haggard whisper, one word spoken like an iron knell.

    "Chimera."

    Alexastra's face paled under her fur as she peered closer, forcing her way through the tangled haze of enchantments cast and torn out and recast again, countless in number and terrifying in strength, a haze that she had first mistaken for a daedric aura of power.   Yes, there was power, incredible power, but...   The chill dropped from the air, the torches renewed their light.   Her lips moved, but the curse died stillborn, her breath stolen.

    "What?  What is it?"

    "Misha?"

    "Yes?"

    She swallowed, hard.   "I really wish you'd been lying."  Without taking her eyes off the Beast, she began to back away, sidling down the hall, deeper into the dungeon.   "Excuse me… I need to confer with my Lady.   I'm not leaving, I just… I need a few minutes of privacy."  Before anyone could stop her, she had jerked open one of the other cells nearby, stepped in, and slammed the door behind her.   A pulse of hellborn hex jammed the lock, sealing her in, and a sweep of her hand shrouded the cell in darkness.

    Rickkter pulled at the door for a moment, then cast a spell.   Sparks flew from the lock, and the raccoon mage backed hastily away before any could land in his fur.   He shook his head at Misha, and the fox nodded once in acknowledgement before whistling for one of the prison guards.   "Get Raven.   Now."  As the armor-clad woman hastened to obey, he held up a hand.   "Wait.   Tell her to bring anything she might have about something called a 'chimera'."  He opened up another cell nearby, swinging its door wide.   "Then gather up some of the Longs and go find me a large table.   We're setting up right in here."

    In his cell, Carcarak's mad laughter broke like shattered glass, and Drift crumpled to the floor and sobbed.

Fin.

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