Noname finds himself standing in line...somewhere unfamiliar. His muscles ache...which is actually unusual for him. He tries to call upon strength, as he is accustomed to doing, but the expected invigorating power fails to manifest. By comparison to his normal daily life, he feels physically weak--weakness like he's never felt before. His muscles ache with every step, and even with every slight movement of his body. Looking around, he sees those ahead of him all clad in tattered and grey clothing, but otherwise formed into a single-file line heading into the interior darkness of some building. Looking back, all the faces bear the unmistakable, cataract blind eyes of the dead. Their faces frozen in the eternal terror of decomposition, and their bodies slowly shambling forward as the line advances every so often. Dropping his gaze to his own hands, it is immediately apparent that they lack all semblance of vitality--there is no life in them. The flesh of his hands is the grey and cracked flesh of the dead, baring elongated yellow-black fingernails.
"Next," a voice says loudly. Noname is shoved forward, "I said, Next!"
What stands before him is a familiar face. The book-eating larva they rescued (bought from the hag). But this familiar face adorns the body of a babau (an assassin demon). He's looking over Noname's body, inspecting it. "Not the best...although not the worst. Take it." Another fiend shoves Noname forward again. "Next."
Beyond the inspector, Noname is herded into a group of creatures more or less in a similar state as himself--unliving. Nearby are other groups of the dead, each corralled by fiends of various sorts. A ragtag troupe of fiends to say the least. Some of the groups are already leaving the area, heading up a flight of stairs.
Something pulls at Noname's shoulder from behind. Its a hand emerging from the wall. All around, fused with every iron surface of this building, are bodies of the undead (although some may be actually dead). The book-eating-larva/ babau-assassin demon yanks Noname free of the hand while at the same time striking at the wall's grasping arms. "You're packing them too close to the wall, move them away," he says to another fiend. In response all the bodies of his group press against each other as they move away from the wall.
After a few moments, his groups is on the move again, at the goading of a fiend. As did the other group, Noname's groups now begins the assent of stairs...
~~
Noname blinks and immediately he is pain free, and his surroundings have changed back to the frozen, nearly-featureless plain of the 348th layer of the Abyss. Whispering howls from the wind seem to form a single word, "...Next..." but then trail off into the otherwise normal sounds of the intense wind again. His allies, Melino, Loli, and Felvin, are nearby preparing for a brief rest before they head out across this forsaken landscape of the Abyss. Perhaps it was only a day-dream, but it sure seemed real enough. Or maybe my mind is beginning to finally slip away into madness. No, its just this wind, I'm sure of it.
~~~~~~~~
Felvin's mind was preoccupied during the most recent battle. In his mind, he stood watching his friends do...nothing. Nothing but talking and planning. Meanwhile an enormous, elephantine, tentacled monstrosity was embracing him from behind, whispering into his ear. But this was completely normal, or so it seemed. This familiar spirit is always here to guide Felvin, he has fond memories going all the way back to childhood of this friendly spirit guiding him. Its embrace is always one of love like a favored steed, but deeper--he could never explain it to anyone in a way they would understand. So he stood there, watching his party planning its next journey and listening to the familiar spirit's advice...its maddening whispers. Experiencing the uncertain lucidity of waking nightmares entirely too tangible to discern with certainty whether he was dreaming or fully conscious. He's never had this level of vividness from a dream, so it must be real. "They plan to kill you, Felvin," it whispers as it embraces him with its firm-fleshy tentacles from several directions. Its strong hands grip his shoulders, its elephantine mouth brushes against his neck and cheek, and its hot rancid breath overwhelms his senses with every syllable it utters. And then Felvin realizes, his familiar spirit has embedded serpentine-like fangs into his neck and shoulder. Oh, not sure how long those have been there. But its OK, this is how it always materializes to him. Its just a sign of his bond of familiarity. A sort of affection one might receive when a pet dog nuzzles you for attention, perhaps. In any case, it was pleasant and did not in the least seem menacing or harmful. Felvin can't help smiling at the warm joy he feels from his familiar spirit.
And then, for some reason that Felvin could not fathom, his party members charge at him bearing weapons and angrily shouting things too incomprehensible to discern their intended message. Have I forgotten their language all of a sudden? However it is not Felvin they attack, but his familiar spirit. How do they see him now? "See? I told you they planned to kill you, Felvin. It will be you next, once they are finished with me." Felvin felt each weapon strike against the familiar spirit as if it had struck himself. Its bizarre screams--perhaps like those of a piglet being stepped on--plead for Felvin to defend him. But Felvin is frozen in a trance, beholding a nightmare that only tenuously bears any resemblance to reality. When the familiar spirit finally falls, when its breathing slows and then stops, its lays motionless, sprawled on the ground. An innocent benign spirit has been destroyed by these bloodthirsty maniacs. Its psychic-bonding fluids then spill out onto the ground from its serpentine fangs as if someone had stabbed a knife into a jug of milk and let it spill onto the ground, never again to conjoin to another mortal in that special bond of a familiar spirit. Something special has been lost forever.
And not until this very moment did the maddening, nightmarish whispers of the thing cease to coerce Felvin's mind and he was then allowed to see it as it really was...it all rushed at him in a moment. He saw how it had charged from out of nowhere at Melino and took her to the ground in a death coil that ten serpents couldn't reproduce while the others attempted to kill it before Melino expired. Is that what really happened? How do I know which one really happened? Once the fiend is finally dead, one of his party members looks around, "Where's Felvin?" And then another looks around, and finally points in his direction, "He's been standing over there staring at nothing like he's in a trance the entire time."
~~~~~~~~
Darkness surrounds Melino's vision. The familiar sounds of Sigil's Great Bazaar seem to fade into the background. A baritone male voice soothes, "As you listen to my voice, focus your attention inside. As your attention focuses inward, so your unconscious mind begins to take you into trance with me. As you breathe in and out, you will notice an ever deepening comfort starting to develop.” Melino realizes the sounds of Sigil have been utterly muted. All is darkness as she focuses. The only thing that exists is the soothsayer's voice. "Now, Remember. ... Take me back to the days of your youth. Recall the time of your innocence. Bring me back to your earliest awareness. What stands out the most to you?"
Melino begins to hear the voices of her mother and father talking to each other.
As if sensing Melino recoil from their voices, the guide reassures her, "I'm right here, little one. No one can hurt you while I'm with you here."
Scenes of her childhood begin to take form, but in shadowy, disconnected moments.
"Remember..." a whisper from the soothsayer urges again.
In response, the shadows that had been obscuring the scenes began to evaporate. Then many of the revealed scenarios from her childhood replay all at once, overlapping visually, and at a high speed. Nothing is distinctly discernible. The chaos causes Melino to once again drift away from those memories.
"Shh, shh, little one. Its OK, I'm right here with you. Release the pain to me."
The calming effect of his voice pushes the shadows completely away from one scene in particular, bringing it to her fore-mind.
"Focus on this pain. Let me take its burden upon myself. I can remove the pain from you, but I must see it." Melino is suddenly propelled mentally into the memory as it gains the vivid immersion of conscious lucidity.
~~
An enormous tentacled monstrosity charges at Melino, its blubbery grey-black flesh undulating with its stride as it approaches, seemingly in slow motion. Globules of some kind of viscous liquid fly into the air here and there from its writhing chest-tentacles. And then in quick motion, the elephantine-fiend envelops Melino in what can only be described as a death coil, multiple tentacles encircle her frame, slowly tightening their grip. Bright red veins bulge along the fleshy grey-black tentacles, while digestive fluids that coat them work upon her flesh.
~~
"No." The soothsayer seems confused. This one word of his attempts to reject this scene. "This is not a memory. You're losing focus," he declares, although it seems to be directed more to himself than to Melino.
Suddenly, Melino hears the familiar sounds of many people going about their business in the Great Bazaar of Sigil. Her eyes flash open to see a glabrezu, face to face, sporting a Leo hairdo. His eyes remain closed in intense concentration. His hands grip Melino's hands tighter.
"No!" he insists. His voice and his body language seem to suggest he's afraid of something. "No! You're not real..." his voice trembles, his breath quickens as his body prepares for a fight or flight response.
Among the many voices at this carnival-bazaar can be heard one suddenly gasp, "What's happening to him?"
The soothsayer then falls motionless from his seat, splaying out indignantly on the street as one who has just died. People quickly gather around, and then part to allow a flurry of clergymen of various faiths to inspect him.
"He's fine," one says to another. "He's not dead." The glabrezu's quick and heavy breaths makes that obvious.
"Perhaps his memory reconstructions overwhelmed him," another suggests.
"He does get very involved in those memories," someone else concurs.
A stretcher is produced from the crowd and the soothsayer is carried away. One of the clergyman stops Melino from following, "William will be just fine. He can recover safely at the temple." A face in the crowd suddenly draws Melino's attention, the face of an extravagantly dressed fox-headed female bearing a worried, fearful expression.
~~
Then a cold blast of wind that bemoans its own existence brings Melino back to the 348th layer of the Abyss. A subtle whispered word "...William..." seems to form from the winds just as all sounds and sights from Sigil completely vanish from her mind. A blasted, nearly featureless plain extends in every direction as she sees her party still recovering from the battle with the fiend they just fought and another fiend riding away on a scorpion and approaching a cliff ledge nearby, about a hundred feet away.
~~~~~~~~
Loli finds herself in darkness with the sounds of someone or something shuffling about nearby...and grunting. She hesitantly opens her eyes to see that she's laying flat on her back within some kind of metal warehouse. Two iron slabs occupy this area, the one Loli's on, and the other also occupied with a humanoid of some sort laying on its back. A metal table burgeoning with clutter sits between the two slabs. Loli turns her head to the side to get a better view of the other slab. Immediately, the sight of a certain infamous fox-headed female from Sigil shocks her mind into focus. The woman has all the signs of one who has died. And beyond that, her arm has been amputated and lies near her, although some feet away from where it belongs. But the arm does not seem quite right. It does not have fox-like fur, as one would expect, but grey, decaying flesh--quite devoid of fur or hair of any kind. Well, except for part of the hand, where it bears some orange and white fur, but only in patches. Then a grunt, followed by a snort. Then suddenly the back of an enormous creature blocks Loli's view entirely. The creature tosses a clean-picked bone over its shoulder (that bone must be at least three feet long), while the creature smacks its lips from what can only be the final motions of consuming whatever meat had been on that bone. With its head down examining the other body, its reaches blindly behind itself, searching around twice before grabbing what at first seemed to be a gnarled, knobby club, but once the creature has it in his hand, Loli can clearly see that its some kind of rod or club composed entirely from tongues sewn together, like human and elven tongues probably...and they aren't dead!? Loli sees that all the tongues are moving independently of one another just before it disappears from her vision. The enormous beast raises it above its head and strikes the woman on the other slab, resulting in the obvious sparks of something magical briefly lighting up the room. The beast chuckles, "Well hello there, you beautiful little thing. Why dontcha just relax and let Lord Tapheon have his way with ya?" A brief maniacal laugh, then a boisterous hateful bellow, "Who'm I kiddin? You don't have a fucking choice, you stupid uppity bitch." The brief illumination reveals piles of body parts in various places around the room in somewhat conical piles everywhere. Something like a dismembered arm tumbles from the top of one of these piles, crashing into some metal objects on the floor. The beast makes some sort of quizzical noise from its throat and turns its head around to see Loli halfway lifted up from the slab and looking around. In one quick motion, the thing is standing right next to Loli's slab, its head the size of a full grown mastiff hovering over her, and a hand pressing onto her chest--a hand that stems from an arm not at all unlike a tree trunk. It leans down real close, "And just where d'ya think yer off too, good sir?" Its voice is mocking and quiet. "I haven't yet finished ya up. Just stay put before I have to strap ya down again." It pauses to look over Loli's face closely, then down her entire body. Its enormous stubby fingers stroke its chin as it takes in the view. "Good sir, I say. Don't be in such a big hurry. I haven't yet sewn your legs back on ya yet. You wouldn't get too far." It snickers, its voice thick with mockery. It then uses its free hand to hold Loli down by the throat, and with the other hand lifts the rod of tongues into the air, utters a strange syllable, and then strikes at Loli's groin area, and again with the magical sparks. What follows are the strangest sensations, where once something was definitely missing, something is now back where it should be. The creature abandons this work to return to the other slab. Loli sits up enough to see that she--right now at this very moment--is missing one leg...but its lying nearby further down the slab. Did that thing just attach a leg to me with that club? And she also notices that she's wearing formal evening ware...men's formal evening ware. Is this a tuxedo? The creature turns again suddenly, and returns to Loli again, anger on its face, a hand pressing down on Loli's chest like an elephant's foot. "Now, William, I guess I'm gonna hafta tie ya back up anyways." With one hand it reaches for some iron chains nearby, while it mutters to itself, "Ya just never know what you're gonna get from the restless dead..." he complains to himself.
~~
Loli's perception suddenly returns to see her party on the howling, blasted plain of the 348th layer of the Abyss. As her senses return to her, the moans of the wind seem to form a single whispered word "...William..." and then the sounds (and smells) of the macabre scene are entirely gone, as if it had been a day dream.
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