Nightmares

Alavara

Alavara, trancing can take many different forms. Generally, for you, it is a deep meditative state where you will occasionally experience some visions, which are generally memories that you relive. Most of the time your trance is peaceful and there are no visions/ dreamlike occurrences. This is not one of those nights.

You find yourself walking in a stone labyrinth. Randomly throughout are ornate mirrors. Each reflection shows you at a different time in your life… as a child living with the elderly elven couple, as a young teen traveling with a tiefling caravan, as an enthusiastic student of magic etc. etc. As you continue through this maze you almost instinctively know what turns to make. However, you begin to hear noises. Some shuffling, loud footsteps of what sounded like a large beast. Claws scraped across the stone floor. It is getting louder, closer. You begin to run, making turns quickly, in a bid to escape it. You hear a roar, it is almost upon you. You cannot bear to look behind yourself, but you can feel it now, breathing down your back as you run, full speed ahead, into a dead end.

You turn around to face the monster but there is nothing behind you. You turn back to face the mirror and you see a strange reflection. It is not a reflection of you in the past. Your reflection wears a long gray dress, with sleeves that nearly touch the ground. A black sash is tied around her waist, and a large, spiked headpiece adorns her brow. The eyes of your reflection are closed, and a steady stream of an ink-like substance runs down her eyes, over her cheeks, and onto her neck and chest. Your reflection reaches her hands up to touch the mirror, and you find that your hands are doing the same, although you are not moving them of your own volition. Almost like you are her reflection. You stand there, your hands to the mirror for a few moments, when suddenly her eyes open, revealing pitch blackness, and she smiles widely, as her hands wrap around yours and she pulls you into the mirror.

  You are falling through the darkness for what feels like hours when suddenly you open your eyes. You are laying in a small bassinet in your room. You feel the blanket wrapped tightly around your body and you attempt to wriggle yourself free. The window is closed, but you can hear a light breeze from outside. It is dark, but a fire burns in the fireplace across the room, and there is a warm glow. In the distance, you hear music, singing, and laughing. You yawn, wiggle in your swaddle again, and settle in to go back to sleep. But suddenly, the music stops. There is a moment of quiet. No sound. And then the screaming starts. Horrible screaming. And the hissing, and roaring and bellowing. Your lip begins to tremble, and you prepare to cry when the door to your room flies open and she walks in. You like this one. She comes and sits with you, rocking you gently and telling you stories. Sometimes she sings you songs. She has a beautiful voice. You immediately quiet down and look at her as she leans over your crib. She is wearing a fancy dress, not what she normally wears to come to see you. You lift your arms so that she can take you, and one of your fists grabs a handful of her silver hair. You look into her bright blue eyes, and you can see that she is as frightened as you are. Tears stream down her cheeks as she holds you close to her chest and coos softly at you. You pat her on the back to comfort her, when a loud crashing noise comes from the hall, in addition to a low growl. The woman holds you tightly, narrows her eyes, and heads for the door.

 You wake up.

Buggy

You are walking through the city. It seems like a normal, sunny day, and people are out doing their shopping and attending to their business. You turn down the street to your old house, the one you shared with your wife and children. At this point, a cold wind starts blowing and the sky darkens. The streets are suddenly empty, and angles seem sharper/ something is off. As you walk down the street to your house, space seems to distort and it takes you a lot longer than it should get to the door. You slide your key into the lock, and open the door (this strikes you as odd, since you no longer live there, and no longer have a key. The door opens and the inside of the house is dark.

kids start saying “daddy, we need you”, crying, can’t tell where it’s coming from, you search through all the rooms, it seems like they are in danger. 

  Eventually, you find your children. They facing away from you, and they are bigger than you remember. You still hear crying, but oddly, the sound doesn’t seem to be coming from the part of the room they are standing in. As you approach them, they turn around. They have no faces. Nothing, no eyes, nose, or mouth. You have a moment of realization that you don’t know what your children look like anymore. From the hallway, you hear a low growl. You turn around and see, in the darkness, two bright green, feline, eyes staring at you from across the room. A tiger begins to stalk toward you, flashing giant, sharp teeth. It hunches down, preparing to pounce…

and you wake up.

Dingus

Dingus is walking around the Tiefling quarter of the Capitol when a young Shadow runs up to him. “Catch me Dingus” he shouts excitedly, tagging you. You grin and begin to chase after him. Looking down at yourself, you can see that you are also a child again. Shadow and you run through alleys, scramble under carts (to the chagrin of the adults), and laugh all the way. You finally catch up to him outside of the Foundling hall, and he grabs your hand with his little paw. You squeeze it as you begin to head up the steps toward the front door. Suddenly you find yourself back to your normal age, holding hands with an adult Shadow. He looks sadly at you as his body begins to crack and crumble. Small bits of black dust blow off of him as he slowly disintegrates in front of your eyes, leaving only a single gold coin in your hands.

Suddenly you hear a crashing from inside the Foundling Hall, as you push through the door you find the Hall is aflame. Fires dance along the walls, and from upstairs you can hear children coughing and crying for help. At the banister you see a young promise trying to get down. You move toward her to try and help, but a large flaming rafter crashes into the stairs, making them impassable. A large flame blows up, and smoke fills the air. When it clears, Promise is gone. You hear Granny Bliss calling for you from the kitchen. “Iados, Iados”, you walk in and see her standing in the kitchen, surrounded by flame. “Where is Iados?” she asks you. You reply. “You aren’t Iados” she says, and you look down to realize you are wearing your Shrek disguise. “I need Iados” Granny Bliss. When you try to take the disguise off, you realize that it will not come off.It's real.

The fire gets closer to Granny Bliss, eventually consuming her. As she burns you see behind her another figure. He holds a large sword, dripping with blood, and the coin in your hand begins to heat up. It gets hotter and hotter and begins burning your hand. You drop it instinctively and see an intricate, golden circle design on your palm.

You wake up.

Io

  You are andering through Alaerth, capital of Draconia. It is just like your father described. Very warm, colorful tapestries and pots for sale on tables. Dragonborn everywhere. The sky darkens, and screaming begins as hundreds of demons pour into the city. People begin to be killed all around, and there is widespread panic as the Dragonborn guards struggle to keep the demons at bay. 

  Any of Io’s attacks will pass straight through the demons, and any attempt to help someone results in them not realizing he is there. if he touches them they turn to sand and fly away in the wind. This continues with the buildings and the rest of the Dragonborn/ bodies. Eventually, Io is alone in the middle of a desert.

 

Nimueh

    You are back at the Order of Nemesis’ stronghold in Volfast. Walking through the same hallway that you walked down a little over a decade ago, in the restricted section. The walls are dark stone and lit by torchlight. This time there are no guards standing outside the room with the little girl. Like last time, she is crying, and like last time, her arms are covered in cuts in various states of healing. Unlike last time she looks up and sees you. With tears still streaming down her cheeks, she stares at you accusingly. You know you could have helped her. But you didn’t. Suddenly, in a whirlwind of black feathers, the girl turns into a raven. She calls out to you and begins flying further down the hall. She wants you to follow.

You find it difficult to keep up, as the raven makes multiple turns through the dark corridors. You sometimes lose sight of her, only to hear her call, and pick back up on the trail. Eventually, you are led to a large room filled with a low-hanging fog. The raven is nowhere to be seen, but you hear its cry up ahead.

As you walk through the room, you notice the floor is wet and sticky. Its blood. To the left and right of you, as you walk past, you notice bodies. Hundreds of bodies. Some of them you recognize. These are people that you assassinated on behalf of the Order. There is the young man who unwittingly became a wild magic sorcerer. You had strangled him with a garrote. There is the older woman who was known to heal people that had incurable ailments. There is one of your darts lodged in her neck.

As you walk past them, and about a dozen others who you killed, they open their eyes and cock their heads to watch you move past. “Murderer” they whisper to each other, and then more loudly proclaim “murderer” as you continue to walk past. At this point, you begin to hurry to get past them, and the fog becomes thicker. You can still hear the raven calling, and you continue forward, until you see a figure in a cloak up ahead, facing away from you. The raven sits on the figure's shoulder. The figure turns around and you can see the face of your mother, as she raises her bow, draws back an arrow, and lets it loose straight at your heart. Your trance cuts off immediately and you come back to reality, drenched in sweat.