Raum | 14 High Sun, 1719 CE
There was a peace to the dream-like landscape. Despite the gray fog that hovered over the iridescent sheen of the water, there was a clarity for those looking down on the world, above the mists and waves. The earth below was obscured, but the portrait of the realm was as clear as crystal. The breeze was lightly dancing over the nightgown that covered Raum from her shoulders to the floor, chilling her somewhere deep in her bones. The hairs on her bare arms stood on end as the air currents brushed gently across her lavender-colored flesh. Raum stood on the parapet of a tower, a short half-wall of bricks, topped with black iron fence spikes that served as a guard rail for onlookers. Twilight had fallen, casting fiery streams of light across the grasslands, and bathed Raum in a glow of light. The sun was beginning to set behind a wall of harshly tipped mountains that stood opposite the keep.
She closed her eyes, taking in the fading warmth of the sunlight before it disappeared. She did not know this keep, or the valley before her. There was something familiar about it though, which she couldn’t put her finger on. Lost in the silence and her own mind, she tried to envision this place within her memories. Another breeze washed over her body, making her loose hair fly out behind her. She opened her eyes, staring at the massive lake just to her left. It went on for probably a hundred miles, like a small sea, glistening in the fading light, echoing fragments of stars, like the ones soon to shine on the world.
She took her hands from the metal railing, drawing them to opposite arms and rubbing the chill from the surface of her skin. It wasn’t just the wind that proved chilling. She felt the sensation of being watched. Though she was physically alone, she felt watchful eyes of an immaterial presence probing the very fabric of her being. The discomforting sensation was diametrically opposed to the serene view and peace she had felt a moment ago.
In nearly an instant, the world disappeared from around her. There was no sensation preceding, only the unexpected and instantaneous awareness of being pulled down under the weight of a large body of water. The liquid enveloped her, pulling her towards the bottom of the lake like intense waves slamming into a beachhead. She was consumed, unable to breathe. A sensation of being dragged along with the current began, ending almost as soon as she became aware of the sensation. Moments later, struggling, gasping in the depths for a breath, she felt as though gravity itself was hindering her efforts to escape to the surface.
Mid-gasp, the air was reintroduced to her in a sudden explosive moment. Her throat tensed, and a gargled breath of relief flooded into her lungs. She coughed and struggled to bring her breathing back under control at the yet again unexpected change in environment. From serenity to nearly drowning, to open air in such rapid succession had an intense effect on the body’s ability to regulate itself. She focused on breathing, feeling the air come into her lungs in a sharp wave, and feeling the release of tension as her lungs expelled the excess.
Once she collected herself, she noticed that she was now laying in the middle of the field she had been staring at a short time before. From her current angle, the castle looked menacing, like the sharp teeth of a monstrous fiend. The castle itself was situated on a flat plateau cut into the side of a sharp-looking black-colored mountain. Its walls framed the edges of the plateau, leaving no egress. Four large structures rose above the line of the wall on the plateau.
She could not make out their purposes from the architecture, but she took note of the harsh tableaus and statues carved into the side of the rock faces. Stretching from the center of the plateau was a sturdy-looking bridge structure connecting to a pillar of rock that looked noticeably out of place. It stood vertically, rising just slightly higher than the plateau. Atop its stalactite-like frame, which was entirely separated from the rest of the rock around it like a solitary candle, rested a massive tower with windows and portals carved on every side, rising with the stone to the top.
Still catching her breath, she attempted to stand upright and failed a few times before her legs could support her weight. She looked at the ground a dozen feet in front of her. The water that had attempted to consume her moments ago had begun to retreat in a slow, backward-flowing wave. It came to a halt a short distance away, forming a massive body of water, so large it could have been a small ocean. Looking out over the surface, one couldn’t see the opposite shore. As Raum looked on, shivering and wet, the surface of the water began to boil. A vortex began to form in the center of the water, and around the edge of the maelstrom, the water began to evaporate away, steaming as it left the small sea.
Raum watched it, enraptured by the random violence of the underwater storm. As the water continued to boil and float away, the waterline began to fall into the earth, leaving a massive, cavernous ravine in its wake. Hundreds of small caves adorned the walls of the ravine. Raum walked to the edge of the chasm, cautioning a glance at the unnatural landscape. The feeling of being watched intensified, and Raum felt an intense shiver run up her spine. As she looked on, the muddy walls of the ravine began to churn and slough off. Tens of thousands of arms began to breach the surface of the cliffside, all reaching to the open air from the bowels of the earth.
Raum gasped, unsure of how to react to the wriggling masses of limbs. Slowly, the arms gave way to heads and torsos of creatures out of nightmares. The creatures represented the vast range of horrors that only children seemed to fully understand. The twisting mess of horns, claws, glowing eyes, and wings was accented by an intensifying cacophony of screeches and howls that made Raum’s blood turn to ice. As the demonic creatures began to climb the walls of the chasm and the bodies of their kin, the sun had begun to set behind the mountains to the west behind where Raum was standing. In the dimming orange fire of twilight, the creatures’ shadows took on a sharp contrast as they ascended to the edges of the ravine.
Her attention fell from her immediate surroundings. She wanted to run, but something in her mind held her body in place. Her soul nearly left her physical form as the sensation of a thick calloused and gritty hand firmly grasped her foot. She looked down, getting her first clear view of the monstrosities birthing themselves from the abyss.
A pair of spiraled ram’s horns, far thicker and longer than her own, adorned the creature’s bald head. Four thickly muscled arms, ending in massive clawed hands extended from the creature’s shoulders. Her gaze met the four yellowed eyes that angled across the sides of its snout-like face. As she stared on in horror, she could swear she saw the outline of black flames burning behind the surface of its pupils. Large, leathery wings extended from the creature’s body, flapping away, as the creature stood up in front of her. She fell backward, staring up at its hulking frame. It stretched out, dozens of its kin beginning to pull themselves out from the chasm behind it. It broke its gaze with Raum and pushed forward. She watched as the legions of demonic soldiers began to form up in rows like a military formation. The creature that had held her captive for that brief moment, turned back to her, glaring. It spoke in a hollow, almost dissociated voice, in a tongue that was unfamiliar to Raum. She was aware that she did not know the language, and yet, a voice in her mind turned the sounds of its voice into words.
“Bear witness, child of the Void, to the fall of the Hallowed.”
She turned around, ready to run, and was stopped instantly by the hand of another identically monstrous creature. Its hand wrapped around her face, and in one swift motion, tore her head from her neck.
It wasn’t the end, however. Raum felt the sensation of being swept along the wind like a leaf, levitating far above the surface of the land. She looked down at a sea of blackness, illuminated by crimson red, and filled with the sounds of fearful screams. She was no longer watching over the barren grassland of the castle but was instead now staring at a wide swath of villages and hamlets burning to the ground. What wasn’t burning had become a massive battlefield. She could see legions of demonic monstrosities charging the ranks of combined forces of elves, dwarves, and men. The demons tore into their ranks unflinchingly decimating battalions of resistors. Civilians and soldiers alike lay dead or dying. Flayed flesh and the remains of tortured souls were strewn across the streets. Somewhere in the background of her mind, a voice as hollow as before echoed.
“Seek the place where the eyes silenced the voice of ruin, where you may see the Void, and the Void sees you. In the labyrinth below the mirror’s surface, the father’s child will ascend amidst the tortured souls, and be reborn as a living god. Nature’s will shall be done and you will purge the world of this living plague forever.”
The flashes of battles and widespread massacre threw themselves across Raum’s vision. What had begun as the green landscape of the Continent, had transformed into a blackened scar. The world began to spin, and Raum realized quickly that she was in free fall, her stomach in her throat.
***
Raum woke up screaming, cold sweat pouring from her, and her arm muscles spasming from fear. She sat bolt upright in her cot, enough that the stick frame of the bed creaked loud enough to worry her it had broken. Raum could still smell the burning flesh, rotting corpses, and sulfurous hellfire lingering in the air. She wiped her face of the stinging perspiration, and placed her hand over her chest, trying to will her heart into slowing its beat by applying pressure. She closed her eyes to steady her breath, realizing instantly the mistake she made, and visions from her dream flooded back. She forced her lids open and began searching desperately for something to focus on besides her dream.
Her room was barely that. The small hollowed-out cavern had been dug below the roots of a great oak. The small candle she had left burning before bed had gone out from the breeze sweeping in through the entrance to the hole. She focused her attention on the night, trying desperately to forget her nightmares, which had come with alarming frequency over the last few months, and intensified with each passing night. Outside the hole, she could hear the near-silent prowl of nocturnal predators, a paw crunching leaves and branches beneath it.
***
As the days and weeks wore on, Raum continued to think about the vision as she moved through her daily chores and tasks. She began her studies late in her thirteenth year of life, learning about the natural world around her. The druids of her tribe instilled a passivity into her that was only broke if threatened first. Raised by a father and mother not her own, Raum learned to embrace the tribe as her new family and embraced the druidic traditions that were passed down to her.
The years passed uneventfully, despite the continued dreams. The final words of the haunting voice rang through Raum’s head as she tried to dissect the riddle of the dream. No one but her closest friend was told about it, for fear of being seen as a fellow villain. It was not lost on Raum the shocking resemblance between herself and the creatures in her vision. Her pale-pink skin, and hair that was so black it shimmered purple were distinctly different than the skin of her human tribesmen. Also not lost to her was the distinct lack of horns among the rest of her kinsmen, whereas a pair of curved ram-like horns adorned the top of her skull.
At sixteen, she found her place in the tribe, being given the opportunity to train in the druidic arts with the elder who found her so many years ago. Remembering the lines of the voice in her dream, she watched and learned about the wild primordial magic of nature. Both seeking balance in it, and within herself. A year and a half after beginning her magical studies, she was asked to accompany Gralik, the elder under whose tutelage she was growing, into the woods to commune with the spirits of the natural world, and accept the talents that had so naturally budded within her. Unknowingly, that was when the visions plaguing her dreams began their slow turning of the wheel of fate, moving her ever closer to the destiny she had concealed from herself and others. On that day, she put in motion the events that would unravel the fabric of the world.
