Arc 1: Chapter 4: Memory of a Dream’s End
In my dream, I see fire raining from the sky.
Not a dream. A memory. But, in the manner of dreams, visions flash before my eyes without order or sense. I relive fragmented moments of time, become lost in them until I feel as though I am descending into an ever-deepening whirlpool. Spinning, spinning, and all the while I see—
A regal figure pierced by a dozen blades, made to kneel as his crown slips from silver hair to shatter on a floor carved from living crystal—
Flame raining from a tortured sky to fall on a dream-wrought city, white towers crashing down as armies clash in the burning fields beyond—
Golden forests blackening as fire sweeps across them, trees twisting into nightmare shapes as a great shadow strides through the destruction, winged in cinders and crowned by a smoldering sky—
Columns of ash-masked figures trailing across the land, fleeing the destruction, beginning to scream as the sky darkens moments before arrows and things worse begin to fall—
An elven warrior wearing a bronze circlet and armor of furs and hides, blood-soaked and fell-eyed, turning his back on me—
A woman reaching for me as I back away. I raise a sword between us. Her eyes melting into red tears as fire bursts from them and she lunges, clawed fingers stretching, her form coming undone to reveal what lies beneath—
The flow of images are unceasing, until I fear my mind will come apart with them, that I will become nothing but fragments of moments, shards of mistakes.
Is this death?
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