[WP-002] Worse Dreams (Deceiver)

[Baneful]

The next time Deceiver found himself in a strange dream, he was prepared for it. He was walking alongside a legendary kin he’d never met before, and he was far, far beyond the swamp. He hadn’t been out of the blasted place since he was very young and even then, this wasn’t the desert, it was somewhere else entirely instead. His muscles ached and he knew he’d been walking for ages, the old stabbing phantom pain in his missing leg worse than usual and his back aching from long travel. He wanted to sit down, but as he realised that the group in his dream had arrived at another obelisk it seemed that at least he’d get a chance to.

This place was completely strange, with long rippling grasses as far as the eye could see and far, far too much sky. It made him feel dizzy to look at it after so long in the swamp, as if the world was upside down and any moment they could all fall off into the deep impossible sea of blue.

The wind here felt wild, as if it had time to get up speed and stretch its legs, and there was a definite feeling that it was a dangerous wild animal and could easily trample an unwary kin underneath its hooves.

Once again he played no part in helping to solve where the symbols led or what they had to do to activate them. He did watch however as the kin who’d come charged around like lunatics testing out their hypothesis about how to solve the problem. When it lit up this time, he was braced for a blast of light that never came quite the same way. There was just the feeling that if he touched it, he’d get back home again. He was never really known for his restraint by any means and he wouldn’t be known for it now, reaching out to touch it.

There was a flash of strangeness and he found himself physically jerked to somewhere that wasn’t the plains any longer. It was still and empty with grey empty air and a lack of definition. He felt blurry, the world felt blurry and he was given the distinct feeling that somehow he’d fallen out of the dream and into somewhere between dreams. He didn’t like it, and the lack of ability to focus somehow made it worse. Starting to walk, he let the land spool out under him, his muscles still aching and his body exhausted.

There was something on the horizon and that was all he could think about, moving towards it with a flat determined air about him.

Again the world changed location and he was in the familiar damp grass of the swamp, once again in front of that sinister obelisk he’d ended up in front of the last time. But this time he couldn’t get away, he felt tired, unbelievably tired.

These plains weren’t the same, they were all wrong somehow. There was an acrid rotten smell that rose up from under his weary hooves with each step. The trees -  what little there were - contorted as if in agony and their branches reached up pleading mercy from an indifferent sky. It made him feel ill, and he sought his way back to the dream swamp, hating this dream within a dream within a dream. He moved towards the obelisk because there was no option here and no other paths to safety and with nauseous reluctance, he touched it.

Once again when he returned to the waking world, the REAL waking world, he found himself doubting it for a time, remembering the tortured plains so vividly it was hard to shake.

There was something not right about any of this.

-628