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Blood For Blood - part 1 [Incomplete]
His mind plunged into nothingness. Bereft of senses, his tiny conciousness was left bare and blind before the endless void. The spark of his being cringed at the overwhelming feeling of insignificance, threatening to snuff it out. But some part of him that still recalled being part of a body and a mind forced him to focus on something he could no longer comprehend.
Stars began to form in the blackness, tiny points of white that seemed more like extensions of his conciousness than far off nebulae. These stars grew brighter and brighter, eating away at the nothing, until everything was white that fringed to grey. Color started to bleed into the ivory expanse, coiling and blending into dark, blurry shapes. The shapes steadily devoured the white until, very slowly, he could see.
What he saw was a shadowy landscape from on high, a hideous forest of blighted yellow trees with black bark that wept a cystic fluid. The sky above was choked with dark clouds lit with greys, greens, and oranges from some unidentifiable source. The magical extension of his sight was mobile, so he oriented his vision in every single direction, seeking something in particular, something he was beginning to recall.
Detatched from his body, it was impossible to judge how long he searched, but eventually his arcane eyes discovered something that made his distant conciousness feel a tingling of recongnition. A patch of black sat isolated within the blanket of unliving yellow, it was a swath of trees that stood dead and dark. They were corpses amidst a sea of leprous mockeries of nature. His sight grew fuzzy for a moment, and when it cleared the center of his sight was drifting somewhere beneath those dead boughs. Ahead a couplet of trees rose up from the swampy, fetid gound, their lifeless branches snaking around each other, forming an arch. The air within the portalway writhed and distorted, momentarily forming a oval doorway that blinked into and out of sight. When the gate was visible, his eyes could detect slanting rays of silver light within its borders. He'd found the entry point.
It was then that darkness began to claw at the edge of his vision. Suddenly he felt someone very far away become overwhelmed with pain, and his sight began to waver. Finding his sight wrest from his control, the hideous forest began to blur and slide away as if he were traveling with great haste. The weeping canopy quickly fell away to a vast savannah that rushed past too quickly for him to make out anything, spiriting his sight to a massive structure of stone, wood and bone that crawled across the plain on massive wheels. He was dragged beyond the structures towering walls and mighty fortifications where the blurriness of his vision fell away to reveil a grand and filthy hall. Still lacking control, he could only focus upon a single subject--a throne of bloodied bones and skinned flesh upon which a horrible figure sat. Unable to resist, he was forced to look into the figure's face, a snarling hyena-like visage with bloody red eyes.
"Tell me who dares gaze upon my realm." It demanded.
He could not respond--he shouldn't even have been able to hear--and his field of vision continued to deteriorate until nothing but those two glowing red orbs remained. Someone far away cried out.
"Who dares?!" The eyes roared, and then they were gone.
The darkness fell away, and in its place was a hyena's face filling his vision. He panicked, thinking the fiend had found him, but his kicking feet and writhing body couldn't seem to take him away from the demon's grip. The foul beast was yelling something, demanding he answer, though it took his fear-addled mind a while to realize that the creature wasn't screaming a demand but actually saying his name.
"Rakashi! Rakashi, calm yourself! You're back in the world! It's over!"
A name came to mind, a long forgotten thing.
"Gnak," Rakashi wheezed, and with the word came a rush of memories. Suddenly he remembered everything, and his body slumped.
"Tell me you're back to normal," the gnoll with emerald eyes said, his voice filled with both relief and trepidation.
"I am," the mage replied uncertainly. He was still a little disoriented and his thoughts seemed flighty and hard to grasp, but he could sense again. The musky smell of damp soil and the dull pungence of plantlife filled his nose and he could once again feel the cold earth against his back. Gnak had moved his head back so Rakashi could see the cavern cieling again, its uneven surface punctured with grasping roots and draped with cobwebs. But something was odd. His arms felt sore and his hands were clenched around something furry. Looking down at himself from his position on his back Rakashi could see that Gnak was holding him down by the shoulder, his leather-protected arm stretched above the druid's thin chest. Rakashi saw that his hands were wrapped around the gnoll's upper arm, where his vambrace fell away to bare fur, where his claws had buried themselves deep. Gnak's greying brown fur was stained with red.
"Oh gods, Gnak, I am so sorry! Ninefold apologies, ninefold!" Rakashi frantically wailed, quickly retracting his fingers and trying to scramble up to his feet. Be despite the bleeding punctures in his arm, Gnak's hold was still tight and he easily kept the frail-limped druid down.
"Easy, friend, easy. It's fine, just a few scratches. But you need to calm yourself. Collect your mind. You're straining yourself too much as it is."
Gnak was right, he told himself. His breathing was coming shallow and fast and his chest burned with a hollow ache. Rakashi shut his eyes and tried whispering softly a druidic hymn sung during the winter solstice which helped a little. The gnoll watched him wearily for a long moment before deeming it safe enough to take his hand from the druid's shoulder. Rakashi lay there humming for at least a minute before opening his eyes again and slowly sitting up. Gnak watched him all the while, anxious but also worried over his friend's health.
Rakashi turned towards the gnoll and raised a hand to his injured arm. Gnak did allowed him to touch his bloodied fur and managed not to flinch when a claw irritated one of the cuts. The mage whispered another druidic chant, though this one carried a warmth to its words whereas the other had been cool and bracing. A soft glow issued from his grey talons, and in a breath the gnoll's flesh was whole beneath his fur.
Rakashi quickly retracted his hand and looked away. Gnak knew that meant Rakashi was cursing himself for what he had done--a nasty habit of the druid's--so the gnoll promptly caught his attention before he could destroy his own self-image any further. Plus he was dying to know if the spell had been a success.
"I appreciate the healing. But, it worked, correct? You know where to go?" He was very direct so as to snap the druid out of his depreciating trance quicker. It worked, as those sapphire eyes quickly returned to his own. Rakashi was still noticably apprehensive about his answer, however.
"Ah," he started, clearly still rattled, "Ye-yes. Yes, I did. In, in a sense. It w- . . . it was there. To the west, in a dead wood . . . somewhere in-er, around the Moonsea. I saw Selune's light through the trees. I'll, ah, I'll need a couple of days to confirm it, but, but yes, I'll soon know where." A couple of days. Gnak was loathe to wait any longer, but he had to accept it. And in any case, Rakashi could really use the time to collect himself. He didn't usually stumble over his words like that unless he was really out of it. Or just plain flustered.
Gnak placed a big hand on the druid's rapier thin shoulder and told him, "Good work. You do not know how grateful I am for all of your help, Rakashi. But try to rest somewhere during those 'couple of days'. You'll need it."
.::More to come.::.
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